Cool Tool: Automated wine and food matching, with recipes

I was recently visiting the Splendid Table website, trying to convince host Lynne Rossetto Kasper to bring her Willamette Valley tour to our winery. Her producer, Sally Swift, politely declined stating that their tour stops have already been finalized.

But, I followed a couple of links and found this cool tool called Wine Matcher. The first part works like an automated wine and food pairing list. You select a wine, and it returns food matches for every meal course – from appetizers right through to dessert.

It also allows you to start with a food, and it returns several wine matches. For example, I selected risotto with mushrooms and it returned Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir, and Pinto Gris. That part is useful, but it goes a step further and offers a comprehensive set of recipes that include similar ingredients. The recipes come from a variety of sources and chef’s.

Thanks go to Natalie MacLean for creating this tool.

Seufert "Bella of Yamhill Vineyard" wins GOLD MEDAL

Our late harvest ice-style dessert wine took the gold medal at the January 2008 Oregon Wine and Food Festival.

In 2005 we made a very small batch of dessert wine and got hooked on it. As crush 2006 drew near we came across some excellent fruit that had the potential to make a dessert wine. The 2006 growing season was warm and dry, and we didn't get a repeat of the '05 botrytis.

However, the dry weather let us hang the fruit until Halloween, allowing it to develop rich peach, apricot, and pineapple flavors.

The Chardonnay (78%) and Gewurztraiminer (2%) were taken to a commercial freezer immediately after hand picking. They were pressed while frozen which extracts concentrated grape juice and leaves water behind. These elevated sugars were partially fermented, leaving behind residual sugar. The Chardonnay provides Bella's full body and ripe peach flavors. The Gewurz adds a subtle spice note.

Meanwhile, Riesling (10%) and Pinot Gris (10%) were processed and fermented conventionally. The Riesling was fermented dry and adds crisp acidity and a floral bouquet. The Pinot Gris was fermented to 1.5% residual sugar and contributes minerality.

All of the Bella ingredient wines were fermented in stainless steel tanks, and did not go through malo-lactic (secondary) fermentation. The final blend has 12.7% residual sugar and 11.9% alcohol.

More info can be found here.