Learn to Wine Taste with Jelly Bellys

How do you learn to discern flavors and aroma in wine?  For those who want to increase their ability to identify a wine when they put it under their nose or take that first taste, this can be an issue.  Not all of us have the time to take professional wine tasting classes.  It will shock the pros out there when I make the following statement:  there are some short cuts.  Consider the Jelly Belly approach, for example.

The first time I heard about the use of Jelly Bellies to educate wine lovers was during a discussion with Kristi Snyder, one of my favorite and very talented sommeliers, who happens to work at Lone Eagle Grille, Hyatt Regency, Incline Village.  Kristi works with groups of executives and others who are at convocations at the Hyatt to provide some relief in the heavy-duty education process.  Her wine tasting classes make liberal use of Jelly Bellies!

The basics of a Jelly Belly wine exercise is that you taste the individual Jelly Belly beans first, in order to understand the different flavors associated with certain wine varietals.  Then, if you put all of the Jelly Belly flavors in your mouth at the same time, and chew them together, you can come close to the taste experience of the wine varietal itself.

Here are some classic combinations of Jelly Belly beans that emulate the basics of certain wine varietals. Go to a store that has a good range of Jelly Belly beans, and put the “glass of wine” together yourself.   Or drive to the factory in Fairfield for a fun family day.  Kids can go on the tour, you can hand-pick the beans!

 Pinot Grigio:  Lemon Lime, Lemon Drop, Pink Grapefruit, Tangerine, Peach, Juicy Pear

Riesling:  Peach, Juicy Pear, Green Apple, Cantaloupe, Pink Grapefruit, Tangerine

Cabernet Sauvignon:   Blackberry (2), Very Cherry, Raspberry, Plum, Dr. Pepper

Malbec:  Blueberry, Plum, Raspberry (2), Very Cherry, French Vanilla

Chardonnay:  Pineapple, Mango, Juicy Pear, Pink Grapefruit, Peach, French Vanilla, Chocolate

Merlot:  French Vanilla, Toasted Marshmallow, Chocolate, Very Cherry, Plum, Raspberry, Strawberry, Dr. Pepper

Sauvignon Blanc:  Lemon Lime, Pink Grapefruit, Tangerine, Mango, Peach, Juicy Pear

Pinot Noir:  Very Cherry (2), Raspberry, Strawberry, Plum, Pink Grapefruit, Cappuccino

Zinfandel (red):  French Vanilla, Chocolate, Very Cherry, Strawberry, Raspberry, Dr. Pepper, Blackberry, Plum

Don’t want to hand pick the Jelly Belly beans, but thinking of doing a Jelly Belly wine tasting at home with friends?  Check out  http://www.jellybeanwinebar.com .  There are more than 40 varietal kits offered there!   

Using Leftover Champagne

I can’t bear to throw it out. Leftover champagne can be good for a few days, and in more than one way, so here are a few ideas.

First, hold a Hair-of-the-Dog party and invite your friends on the afternoon of January 1 (or after the next big event where champagne is the dominant drink… Valentine’s Day? Wedding? Bachelor Party? ) to bring their leftover champagne. You can provide the aspirin. That’s what happened at my place on January 1 and it was great fun! A lot of leftover holiday food appeared too, so everyone was happy to ring out the old year and make room in the ‘fridge for the new.

Of course, you might just want to drink any leftover champagne from the event yourself. So make sure you preserve it well. There’s no way the cork will go back into the bottle, by the way.

And forget the silver-spoon-in-the-neck myth. If you want to read a funny dissertation on an experiment done by a truly inventive if somewhat whacky guy that debunks that myth, go to http://www.straightdope.com/ and search for “silver spoon”. Cecil Adams, writer of that dissertation, started his research by asking the Champagne News and Information Bureau in New York and Paterno Imports, a champagne importer in Chicago, about preserving open champagne.

Conclusion: a reusable stopper made of stainless steel is your best bet for preserving the bubbly for a few days. But leaving the bottle open and upright in the refrigerator works pretty well too.

Next, search the internet for drink recipes using champagne. Mimosa (champagne and orange juice, equal parts) is a given. But champagne has a nice acidity that can enhance cocktails in a refreshing citrus-juicy way. The best I found, on the site tastingtable.com, was created by a mixologist at Death and Company, a cocktail lounge in Manhattan’s Lower East Side:

Doc Daneeka Royale
Makes 1 drink

2 ounces Plymouth gin
1/2 ounce Grade B maple syrup
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice
1 ounce Champagne or other sparkling wine
One 1-by-2-inch piece of grapefruit peel

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the gin, maple syrup and lemon juice and shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass and top with the Champagne. Twist the grapefruit peel over the drink and discard. Serve immediately.

Many food recipes use leftover champagne. One that will enhance the dessert table just requires mxing, chilling, and serving over fruit. It will also do wonders poured on leftover fruitcake.

CHAMPAGNE CREAM SAUCE
Yield: 1 Servings

1/3 c Sugar
5 Egg yolks
2 tablespoons Whipping cream
3/4 c Champagne

Or for that après-ski experience, how about a fondue made with champagne? This recipe was created by Tessa, a food blogger from South Carolina who posts on the site copykatchat.com.

Three Cheese Fondue with Champagne

4 t. cornstarch
1 T. fresh lemon juice
1 1/4 c. dry (brut) Champagne (NOTE: do not use Asti..)
1 large shallot, chopped
2 cups coarsely grated Gruyere cheese (about 7 oz)
1 1/3 cups coarsely grated Emmenthal cheese (about 5 oz)
1/2 cup diced rindless Brie (or Camembert) (3 oz)
Generous pinch of ground nutmeg
Pinch of white pepper

1 French bread baguette, cut into 1 inch cubes

Stir cornstarch and lemon juice in small bowl until cornstarch dissolves; set aside.Combine Champagne and shallot in fondue pot or heavy medium saucepan. Simmer over medium heat 2 mininutes, remove pot from heat. Add all cheeses and stir to combine. Stir in cornstarch mixture. Return fondue pot (or saucepan) to medium heat and stir until cheeses are melted and smooth and it thickens and boils - about 12 min.
Season with nutmeg and white pepper.
Serve with bread crumbs.

Remember, Keep Tahoe Green. Do not pour leftover champagne down the sink!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
© 2011 Barbara Keck

For more information on dining and the wide range of activities around Lake Tahoe, see the online version of The Tahoe Weekly. This article appeared in my column "It's Grape" in January 2011.

Book in Process: " Mountain Wineries of the Sierra and Its Foothills".

Using New Technologies for the Greater Good

Received over the weekend, a joke I just can't resist passing on. It certainly has significance for farmers, and perhaps for info gurus...

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany . Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database thro ugh an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" "You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says Bud. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. ...

Now give me back my dog."

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