While I agree with my husband Robin to a certain degree that you should drink what you like with what you like I must add a serious BUT…

Nothing signifies a culinary symphony so well as a wine perfectly paired with the proper food. I have been fascinated by the wonderful fact that wine paired properly can make the meal, and vice versa. For example, the past two weekends we hosted the Capital City wine trail. We had many visitors who each had the opportunity to do a mini wine pairing with us. I paired our Statehouse wine (a blend of cabernet sauvignon and merlot) with an appetizer of a toasted baguette with angus roast beef topped with melted blue cheese. Mind you, some of our guests did not like dry red wine, others did not like blue cheese. However, I was please that on several occassions the attendees raved about how the two together tasted so good, that people not liking red wines, remarked that they could drink it paired with the roast beef, and even those saying, “I don’t like blue chesse,” remarked that with the wine it was wonderful. Another pairing that brought suprise from our guests was the pairing of our Ohio Catawba wine with pepperjack cheese. Once again, people who normally don’t like a sweeter wine were delighted when they tasted the wine with the contrasting spiciness of the peperjack cheese. Finally pairing our Raspberry Summer wine with chocolate turtle cheesecake is a match made in heaven!

Likewise, it is good to know what foods to AVOID with certain wines. For example, avoid seafood, fish and spicy dishes wih a Cabernet Sauvignon, avoid red meat with Champagne and avoid chocolate desserts with Sauternes.

So if you are content drinking your favorite wine with your favorite food, I salute you. You probably wouldn’t be doing it if the pairing wasn’t pleasing. However, if you are of an adventurous spirit as I am, and you like the excitement of trying new foods and wines, I am providing you with a food and wine pairing guide that I have assembled (with a little help from Smokey Bare, food editor, a wonderful book called What to Drink with What You Eat (Andrew Dornenburg & Karen Page), and the Missouri Wine Council.) Use the chart as a general guide adding your personal favorite pairings.  

Wyandotte Food and Wine Pairing Guide

I welcome you to write in with some of your own discoveries, as you delve into the marvelous and expansive possibilities of food and wine pairings!

As a winemaker and winery owner, I often get asked to fill out requests for information to be included in publications and winery lists.  Of course Valerie and I always jump at the chance for a new way to reach prospective friends of Wyandotte, but sometimes we can get some very interesting questions.

Take, for instance, the most recent request for information from a nice lady who is writing a book on Ohio Wineries.  One of the questions was:

“Philosophy quote from the winemaker/and or Life Quote from the owner.”

Wow!  There is a question for you!  I stared blankly at that one for awhile.  Philosophy?  Do I have a philosophy?  I believe in lounging on the sofa and taking long naps whenever possible, but I am not sure that could be called a “philosophy”.  And a “Life Quote”.  I certainly do not have one of those.  Oh my gosh, should I have one?  Have I left myself unprepared by not having a “life quote”?  Besides, it seems like all the good ones have been taken. “No worries”, “Damn the torpedoes”, “Eat my shorts”.  How the heck was I supposed to figure out how to answer this one?

Finally it came to me.

Valerie and I constantly get people who come into the winery and want to know “What is the right wine?”  What should they eat with a certain food, when should they drink a certain wine versus another wine, what is the best wine, etc.  Some seem to want to apologize that they do not drink the “good wines” and instead like to drink sweet wines.  It seems like they believe the dryness of a wine somehow defines the quality or value of the wine, (poppycock, I say!)  Everyone seems to get caught up in the romance of wine, the mysticism, if you will, of wine drinking, and they loose track of what is important.

So now you are probably wondering what is important.  Ok, maybe you were not wondering, but since I have to come up with a “Philosophy quote from the winemaker”, I am hoping since you have spent this much time reading you won’t want to have wasted all that time and will go just a little further.

Here it is… (drums roll, trumpets blare, little children toss rose petals on the ground……)

 “Drink What You Like!”  

Ok, I did not say it was profound, or life changing, but it does apply to the people who are worrying about drinking the “right” wine.  As soon as I tell them that I believe the right thing is to “just drink what you like”, they almost immediately relax, almost as if I have given them permission to like any wine, or made it OK not to worry about what is “right”. 

Of course, if they want to know, I will suggest what foods go best with a specific red or white wine, and there is nothing at all wrong with knowing those accepted pairings.  Getting the right food with the right wine can make for an awesome experience that brings out the best qualities in each, and everyone should have at least a peripheral knowledge of what goes good with what.  The “drink what you like” philosophy does help some people by taking the pressure away from every day wine drinking and lets them enjoy whatever sounds and/or tastes good.

So, go ahead, drink a Riesling with your burger!  Open that Merlot with your next chicken dinner!  Drink a sweet fruit wine with your pasta!  Pop the cork on that $800 a bottle 2002 Cahteau Talbot with your frozen TV dinner!  (Oh, wait, rewind, I think I went to far with that one). 

Just remember there are no wine police, and you are not breaking any rules.  You can get the full enjoyment out of any wine you enjoy anytime without having to worry about being right or wrong.

Ok, so now I am off to come up with a “Life quote” before someone else asks me that question.  Maybe I will just steal this one from Emily Dickinson:

Love—is anterior to Life—
Posterior—to Death—
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Earth—

I am not sure what that means, but it sure is pretty!

Drink what you like!

You may wonder what it’s like to bottle our wine, so I thought I run through it for you. It takes hours to sterilize all of the parts necessary for the bottling process, the hoses, the tubes, and the bottling and corking equipment. Next we call in the troops. Ryan is almost 17 and Sean is 15. They are always eager to help out…lol. The wine, which has been previously filtered is pumped in to a holding tank. From there a smaller pump supplies the wine in to the semi-automatic bottler.

After filling, the bottles are placed on a table ready for corking. We are pretty excited about our new semi-automatic corker we just got from Italy, thanks to our friend Claudio at Firelands! Anyway, once the adjustment is set for the bottle you simply insert the bottle and press two black buttons, one with each hand, and voila the bottle is corked.

Next, the bottles are placed in a case, and carried to another table, where someone is waiting to clean the outside of the bottles, and begin the labeling process. We just recently purchased this machine too, again from Itily, via St. Patrick’s in Texas. This definately takes some time, but it’s much faster than before!Finally the capsules are shrank across the top and the wine is placed in to a marked box. The wines need to be stored upright for the first couple days and can then be turned upside down for longterm proper storage. For good or bad, we’ve never had to store wine for long!

Last week, on an exceptionally beautiful sunny spring morning, I was smitten by the spectacular show and sheer abundance of the common, and often loathed dandelion. This year however, my reaction to the bright yellow flowers was different. Since my husband and I are the new owners of Wyandotte Winery, we are now wine makers. This year when I saw the masses of golden hues, instead of thinking of the weed and feed I needed to put on my lawn, I was actually contemplating harvesting the sun-kissed beauties. I saw them as an opportunity, as a gift from God, and well…free. Now mind you I have NEVER drank dandelion wine, and quite frankly I was a bit of a snob when I heard others speak of a wine made from the weeds. Why? I would ask them… when there is plenty of good grapes, and fruit available. So, inspired by the revelation of this charming beauty, growing in abundance, just begging to be plucked, I went to the Internet and started researching how to make dandelion wine. There was no shortage of information. I also found some books lying around the winery with some additional recipes. I hadn’t decided for sure to embark on this lofty endeavor, so I decided to sleep on it and see if I still felt the same the next day.

Rising early, I drove Sean to DeSales, came home, worked out, then attended morning Mass. After Mass, I often go to Tim’s for coffee with friends. This morning was no exception. I met Fran and Ken and a new friend to our group, Ed. Ed is 85 years old, from Brooklyn, and a recent widower. The sun was shinning, and I was plotting from which field I should glean the harvest. Ed, had a little car mishap on the way to coffee, scraping the entire drivers, and he was upset. I figured that a little dandelion picking might help him to forget his accident. “Besides,” I told him, “Wouldn’t you like to gain experience as a dandelion harvester?” Quite unexpectedly, Ed said, “OK.” So I went home, grabbed a couple buckets, and ball caps, and Ed and I headed to the Meijer’s lot literally bursting with fresh blooms. Ed and I had the most lovely conversation for hours. It was as though we were not even working…well, when we checked the buckets, it looked like we had not been working! Do you know how hard it is to harvest dandelions????? You must pluck the petals from the base. No green allowed, only the slender petals, that weigh next to nothing. By noon, I was ravished and getting a sun burn, so Ed and I parted ways. Our efforts only yielded a mere 8 cups. I needed three times that amount! yikes

I ate lunch, then ventured back out to pick more flowers. This time, I used my neighbors lawn, with flowers the size of merigolds. Quickly plucking the flower heads I needed to get out of the sun. With several gallons of flowers I used a sharp knife and whacked the bottoms off the petals. By 5:30 PM I finally was able to bring the flowers in a pot of water to a simmer. Then I turned off the heat, and allowed the flowers to steep for about 4.5 hours. I then added sugar to water, brought it to a boil and cooled it. Then I strained the blooms from the liquid, added yeast nutrients, natural tannin, pectic enzyme, and some SO2. The mixture must sit for about 24 hours before adding the yeast. Primary fermentation should take 3-5 days, until the PA reaches 3-4%, then I will rack the wine into a carboy (glass container) and fit it with an airlock. I will check the progress in a couple days! Dandelion wine takes a full year. Who knew?

Hello, all!

The Internet never ceases to amaze me.

As some of you may know I still have a day job as we get the winery going as new owners, and that job is in Information Technology. I have been working with computers for many years, long enough that I have grown up with the Internet and feel pretty comfortable with how it works.

Imagine my surprise when the Google news search I have setup points me to http://blog.winerywebsitereport.com/2008/04/new-winery-blog.html and I see the following article (excerpt attached):
—————————–
New Winery Blog: Wyandotte Winery
Owned by Robin and Valerie Coolidge, Wyandotte Winery is located in Columbus, OH. It has an interesting history, dating back to the construction of the original winery by Amish builders in 1977.

Less than two weeks old, the Wyandotte Winery blog has a great deal less history behind it. And one never knows how these brand-new winery blogs are going to work out, since many are started “because we oughta.”
—————————–

Wow. Amazing. I put up some blogging software to do some experimenting. I want to see what it is all about, what it entails, how it works. Just a “sandbox” to play in. No links to it, I think no one will see it. The next thing I know a link is posted on a site about winery websites, and it is public. Did I say amazing?

Before I go on, I would like to thank the gentleman from Winery Website Report who wrote that article. I appreciate the information, agree 100%, and will work hard to implement the suggestions.

The main points, I think, were “write interesting stuff” and “keep it updated”. Updated we can do. The obvious question becomes “what is interesting?” If you happen to get to this blog and have some ideas, let us know. In the mean time, we will do our best to come up with our own ideas. If we decide the blog is not a good idea, we will not allow it to get stale, we will remove it.

Thanks!

Hello, friends!

Well, Valerie recently attended a conference on wine marketing, and during the conference she learned that many of you enjoy reading blogs.  Never the ones to deny our customer’s wants and needs, introducing the Wyandotte Winery Blog!

I am not sure what we will be discussing here.  I am thinking about writing about the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) that I get when people come into the winery.  I am sure Valerie has plenty of ideas too.  In any case, check back often, or subscribe to the RSS feed, and let’s see how this works!

As always, thank you for being a friend of Wyandotte!

Robin