Good Morning!

I have been blitzed with email lately asking about certain wines and one of the questions was What the heck is Vouvray? OK, here is the short answer.

Vouvray is area just east of the Loire Valley in France and the wine is made from the grape called Chenin Blanc. What is most awesome about this grape is the high acid levels in this growing region. If you were to buy a Chenin Blanc from other areas of the world you might easily think it is a Sauvignon Blanc. They both have similar mouth feel. The Loire Valley in France makes wines from the Chenin Blanc grape and these wines can be made to be very sweet to very dry and it can be a still wine or a sparkling wine.

I have only tried the dry and very dry versions of this wine from Loire Valley, I love the acidity of this wine and I opened a bottle of this the other night with a rich, fatty grilled salmon and the pairing worked perfectly.

If you are drawn to try new wines and you like the Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc look for a bottle of dry Vouvray in the wine department, you can get a good or maybe a great bottle for less than $12.00. If you are looking for perfect pairings for the Vouvray, if you want cheese to match with this try Asiago or Edam. The Asiago will be mild, salty and buttery and the Edam is richer and nutty and the acid will play nicely with the wine.

When it come to protein, I really liked the salmon with the Vouvray we had the other night, but my favorite ever pairing with this wine was Bobby Flay’s Brick Chicken on the grill recipe. You can hunt down the full recipe on food network but the trick to grilling this chicken is how you cut out the spine of the chicken and rub it with olive oil and salt and pepper, then the chicken will lay flat on the grill and you put a brick wrapped in aluminum foil on top of the chicken and then when you flip the chicken over and set the brick on it again. The skin of the chicken is crispy and so flavorful and rich and the acid of the wine is lovely.

I hope this answers your questions about this awesome white wine that can easily be found.

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

Last week my old 12 bottle wine cooler gave up the good fight and I had to send her to the wine cooler heaven. I was reading and reading and scanning the internet and asking questions and I picked up my new 50 bottle wine cellar and cooler on Sunday and she is a dual temp, stainless steel beauty.

I was even more excited when I started to load her up. I went through my “wine closet” and found a few hidden gems that is is about time to open and I was fired up. I found 3 bottles of Don Melchor from 04, Silver Oak 99, Far Niente 02, Chateau Thomas Cab, 94, I found 6 bottles of Opus One from 97, Unfiltered Mondavi from 06, I put in 3 bottles of Merry Edwards Pinot Noir from 01, Ceago Cab Franc 03, Casa Lapostolle Cab from 02, Peirs Meyers Pinot Noir 05, and then I hit the mother load and found boxes of bubbles!

I have about 24 bottles of assorted French Champagne and I started looking for more whites to add to the cooler and found a stash of Chardonnay’s that are from the 1997 year…I had to laugh because I had truly forgotten about them and surprised that I have kinda stopped buying them.

I am sure we are going to have years of fun together and in the future I will finally have a cellar that holds 1000’s of bottles that it will take me a lifetime to fill the room (because I drink way more that I buy).

I just wanted to share the good news of my new baby arriving and ready to except wine over the weekend!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

Yesterday, after 6 plus years of happiness (at least for me), my 12 bottle wine cooler just gave out. I loved that little guy. He moved from Indianapolis to San Francisco with me, then he has spent the last 2 years in our place we have in San Antonio. He was awesome! He was small and did not take up too much room. He kept white wines at the perfect temp and he would gladly take a red and put it at the right temp in just a few hours.

This little cooler was a gift from my best friend Cubby when I was moving to San Francisco. I love any gift she gives me, she is the person who gave me my first home winemaking kit as well. Her gifts seem to help me find my purpose and allow her to drink for free….hmmmmm.

Anyway, I am on the hunt for a new wine cooler. First thing I want to keep in mind is next year we are building a new home and I want a super deluxe wine cellar in the house, so I don’t want to get too crazy when looking for this one, but I would like a cooler that can hold more bottles and not take up tons of space because this wine cooler will eventually end up inside my pantry in the new house.

Well, when my buddies from Facebook heard of the tragety of the cooler’s passing, everyone had ideas of which brand, size, compressor or thermo something, blah, blah, blah….my friend Matt Delaney sent me a link to www.whichwinecooler.com This was awesome, I could read about each cooler, ask some questions, look at pricing and shipping etc. Perfect! The last thing I want to deal with is buying something I need a truck and 2 shirtless, hot, college boys carrying my new baby into my place. (how did the college boys get shirtless)

So I have decided to go with the 47 bottle touch screen wine cooler and it is stainless steel, so the house will look even more modern and I might sit my 1980’s lava lamp on top for some cool psychedelic fun after a few bottles of bubbly!

All kidding aside my reason for wanting a wine cooler is I want my whites not too cold and I can not stand having all the bottles in the refrigerator, that’s where the beer goes! My grieving process for the little cooler will end soon but I will never forget all the beautifully chilled bottles of wine and hours of entertainment the little guy gave me!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

A friend of mine called me and said they were at the wine store and he tried so many wines, his mouth felt like his body does after a workout. I giggled because he is so animated and then after some deeper thought, I thought he might be right. So, I thought about my workout routine and my wine tasting routine and found some of my patterns are kinda the same.

I prep myself mentally before I workout (If you do not know this about me, 10 years ago I had a malfunctioning thyroid and I weighed 267 pounds, today I am about 110 lighter), so I make working out or at least raising my heart rate 5 days a week a big priority. On the way to the gym or prepping to go on a hike, I wear the right socks, shoes, shorts and jog bra and the night before I workout I freeze my bottled water so it stays cold. I put on sunscreen, wear sunglasses and visor and then I am ready for the hike or if I am hitting the gym, I have to remember the lifting gloves, my towel, the ear buds so I don’t have to listen to other people’s music.

When I am going wine tasting weather it is here at home, in a winery or at a restaurant, I have an entire routine, no perfume, when I brush my teeth, make sure I have eaten enough and have a bottled water with me. I make sure I have a ride home if I have had a too much to drink.

When I get to the tasting, I have a ritual of water and wine ratio and sipping and spitting to keep myself from feeling the alcohol to early. I take my notebook and be prepared to take notes. My notes have a life of their own, they start out really detailed and if I like a wine…I rave about it. If I think a wine is poorly made or tastes really generic by the end of the tasting my notes become something like this…It’s color is beautiful but aromas suck and I would not pay $6 for a bottle of this! Hahahaha!

The reason I think tasting is kinda like working out, if I am lifting I will be really careful of form and mechanics of the muscles at the beginning and I watch in the mirror to see if I can see any difference in my body and by the last set and I just trying to power through the last set, so I am sure my mind is saying something like ….This sucks…How many more reps do I have to do? Hahaha

The truth is I can correlate about any activity with something wine related, I tend to do everything the same! I am kinda a neat freak and like everything in order and if I want to feel comfortable and relaxed I do most things the same way every time. When I really want to challenge myself, I watch Biggest Loser and see a new exercise or watch someone on youtube.com do a workout that is for a specific area, I will mix up my routine and see what new muscle is sore the next day. When it comes to wine tasting and I want to mix it up, I will try wines from areas I have very little knowledge about or have not tried at all. I recently went to a Greek wine tasting, really challenged me to think about my process so I could better understand the grape varieties, winemaking styles and the region.

I can pretty much taste any Cabernet from Napa, Pinot Noir from Russian River and Chardonnay from Sonoma and taste the area but to keep me on my toes, I have to try new things all the time. And so I do not get board in the gym or with hiking, I take new routes all the time.

Enough of my rattling on….go enjoy your wine or your workout!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

Good Morning!

I was reminded this morning that tomorrow is National Unoaked Chardonnay Day. I love anyday that has a wine, food, basketball, softball, winemaking, watercolors, beer well, you get this…I LOVE Unoaked Chardonnay and will gladly celebrate it on June 1st.

You might ask what is Unoaked Chardonnay? Well, it is a wine making style. It is when the winemaker lets the chardonnay grapes reach the optimum “brix” (fancy word for sugar levels or maturity of the grapes) and then you pick them. With white wines you press the grapes right away, unlike red grapes that you let ferment before you press them. So once the chardonnay grapes are pressed you can ferment in stainless steel tanks or you can ferment in oak barrels.

You create or better yet, you express the true personality of the chardonnay when you ferment in the stainless steel. Stainless steel can not impart any favors to the wine. With oak fermentation you get a wine that will pick up the favors from the oak like, vanilla, oak, buttery flavors to name just a few. I personally find that if a wine drinker likes some of the white wines that are not fermented or aged in oak, like Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc, they will love the unoaked chardonnay as well. The weight of the wine in your mouth might feel slightly heavier that a Pinot Grigio. I find chardonnay that is fermented and aged without the oak to be lively, notes of citrus and really crisp without the bite of sharp acid…at least this is what I experience, your palate is your guide, go with it.

I would suggest comparing a Chardonnay that has been made in a traditional way with the oak aging and an unoaked Chardonnay…first of all it is great fun to try and I might even suggest making a buttery shrimp scampi or lobster and do a little taste testing and play with both wines and the dish. Or if cooking is not your thing go to the store and grab these two cheeses and both styles of Chardonnay and have a little fun with pairing each of them with each wine…get some Asiago cheese and pick up either Cheddar or Edam. One wine will taste lighter and more crisp and the other will taste more buttery and thicker or heavier and the same goes for the cheese. One is kinda buttery and salty and the other is rich and nutty. But this will be a fun little experiment for you to try and spend less than $30 on the wine and cheeses.

Tomorrow night I am sure 1000’s of people are going to try new unoaked chardonnay and be tweeting about it and I will join in as well and be writing down the brands of wine I have not hear of or tried yet so I can add them to my list of wines to look for. My favorite winemaker of this unoaked style wine is Cindy Cosco the winemaking genius of Passaggio Wines, if you get a chance check out her wines on www.passaggio.com they are AWESOME!

Let me know if you try any unoaked chardonnay and what your results were..I can’t wait to compare notes and stories!

Much LOVE and wine,
Tammi