Spring Is Here, Great For Those Who Love Food N Wine

Welcome Back, As you may have noticed we have maintained our position for our major keywords and also now have another top spot for the phrase "My Journey With Wine" The Spiders love us and I hope that you will too. Well in this post we will continue the DOS of Wine Tasting at A Cellar Door as well as have another food and wine match in My Wine Log. So let's begin

MORE DOS of Wine Tasting At A Cellar Door.

6. DO: Take small portions of wine to taste as mentioned previously, but also consider the advice I was given once by the late Ernie Hunter, of Hunter Wines in Marlborough. He said that each taste should be divided in two equal parts. The first should be swirled around all areas of the tongue and mouth, it's purpose to wash out out any previous wine or water. Then use the second portion to make a judgment of the wine.

7. DO: Be patient if a wine you are tasting has a different taste to wines you have had before. This could be for a number of reasons. Firstly it may simply be a style or variety you have not tried before. Secondly, it may be the wine-maker emphasising an attribute of a wine or thirdly it may be the wine maker trying to develop a new style or resurrect one forgotten in wine making history. It is not usually a sign of bad wine.

8. DO: Try to compare apples with apples or in this case a wine of one variety or blend with another from the same variety or blend. In this way you get a true comparison. Also remember that all wines are not styled equally, so the same grape variety can produce amazingly different wine. How about the Orange Muscat grape which is used to produced a dry flinty table wine , a floral sweeter style or a full blown sweet dessert wine by three wineries I know of. Also be aware that some wines have great immediate flavour impact, a Warrabilla Red for example, while other red wines such as Pinot Noir have complexity of flavour that unfolds with each taste.

We will conclude this series in my next post.

MY WINE LOG

Tonight we broke open a bottle of West End Wines 3 Bridges Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. West End Estate Wines is situated in Griffith, part of the Riverina Wine Region. It has been operated by the Calabria Family since 1945, as Calabria Wines and since 1974 under its present name. So this distinguished winery has a history the same length as mine.

3 Bridges is the flagship brand of West End Estate Wines and the grapes for each variety are handpicked at optimum condition.
The result in this case is a powerhouse Cabernet Sauvignon lavishly barrel-aged and loaded with mulberry and blackberry fruit, dark Lindt chocolate and highlights of mint. This wine was mouth-filling and so long on the palate that we only managed a bottle between us.

This wine needs strong flavours in the food that it accompanies and our simple meal of chicken sausages with a mixed green salad, with avacado, red grilled capsicums, tomatoes and onions may have become lost in it's power. To offset this I took the following steps:

I normally slice sausages and fill them with some cheese to keep them moist and add some flavour, but I chose to do two things with them for this meal. I made up a different filling and had each sausage with a poppy seed coat over the bottom half

Firstly the filling
A lemon peel, two tablespoons of crushed garlic and one of crushed ginger were put in the whizz and processed until creamy then a half teaspoon of chilli powder was added and whizzed again.

Preparation of the Sausages
The sausages were then par cooked by boiling, allowed to cool and then the bottom half of the sausage was placed in flour then whisked egg and then poppy seeds and allowed to sit for 15 minutes. They were then split not end to end, but using the following method:

The cut was started 1 cm from the end of the sausage and went to within 1 cm of the other end. Then a second cut is made along side the first and a sliver of sausage is removed. (That sliver from each sausage was added to the mixture in the food processor and whizzed.

Cooking of the Sausages
The sausages were placed in a dish containing three tablespoons of olive oil with foil over the stop to retain moisture. Then put in the middle tray of the oven which had been pre-heated to 180 degree Celsius oven, for 15 minutes.

Preparation of Salad Dressing
Amounts depend on the amount of salad to be dressed.

1 X Balsamic Vinegar
.5 X Hot english Mustard
.5 Seeded Mustard
1 x Olive Oil
.25 Wasabi or Horseradish
.25 Garlic

Drizzle over salad on the plate.