One of the fun things I get to do as a winery owner is pair our wines with excellent food, and there is no better food partner than the James Beard Foundation’s “Taste America” series. As part of this series, JBF (as they will be known henceforth) travels from city to city putting on dinners that highlight local chefs, cuisines, and wines. On March 6th they are coming to San Antonio, a UNESCO designated City of Gastronomy.
I know that some people feel put on the spot when asked to pair food and wine, and I want to change that. Feel confident pairing wine and food, because there are no right answers. This is not math; this is deliciousness, and there are lots of ways to slice that.
Let’s get started with the First Course of the March 6th JBF dinner:
Ceviche with Seasonal Seafood, Passion Fruit and Turmeric Granita, and Thinly Sliced Kampachi Tempura with Sweet Potato Emulsion, Corn, and Pickled Onion
This course screams for acidity. Why? Because the fattiness of seafood and fried foods taste more savory and less oily when lubricated with acid-driven partners. Just as we like to put lemon on seafood, and ketchup on French fries, we want an acid-driven wine with this course. This points to either an acidic white like the 2022 Arcadia – a blend of Niagara, Roussanne, Riesling, and Viognier – or the 2023 Over the Moon Rosé. Rosés are made from grapes that are picked early, so they almost always have good acidity.
Second Course
Silky Black Bean Cream Soup with Burrata and Truffle, Corn Tropezones, and Pickled Heart of Palm
This one is tough! In general soups are difficult, because, by definition, they are bits and bobs all jumbled together. To pair with them, it is best to focus on a dominant characteristic. In this case, my inclination is to go for its creaminess, both the soup itself and the burrata in it. Here there is a fork, because one could say fat hence acid, and go with the Over the Moon Rosé, and it even helps that the rosé is a blend and hence brings a lot of different flavors to the pairing. Alternatively, one could think about the creamy texture coating my mouth and go with something with some tannins as a contrast. In that case we would go with a red blend – same idea, lots of different flavors to pair with – and I am going specifically with the 2021 GSM Mélange (which just won Best of Class at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition, meaning it was the best Rhône blend, beating out even wines from, uh, the Rhône – woop! woop!). It has an earthiness that can stand up to the truffle. By the way, I did look up what Tropezones are, and it turns out they are clumps. No wonder they didn’t spell that out in English.
Third Course/Entree
Tender, Slow cooked Oxtail with Rich Brown Gravy with Puffed Rice, Scallion, and Pickled Peppers
My mouth is already watering. This dish is going to need a wine with a powerful punch of flavor. Given the meaty flavors, we are going to also want some mighty tannins, and in Texas there is no better response than Tempranillo. Luckily, we have many to choose from: the 2020 Tempranillo Reserve, the 2020 Canted County Tempranillo Reserva, or the 2020 Lahey Vineyards Tempranillo. I will let you pick your personal favorite.
Dessert
Warm Chocolate Cake with Coconut Gelee, Caramelized Pineapple-Rum Chutney, and “Coquito” ice cream
No meal is complete without dessert! The prevailing rule about pairing wine with desserts is that the dessert should not be sweeter than the wine, but that really depends on you are thinking about this. If you consider the wine the true dessert, then the dessert made of food can be sweeter as far as I am concerned. This cake will go perfectly with our Texas Ruby, a rich fortified wine with lots of sweetness, a luscious texture, and vibrant fruitiness.
I hope you feel more confident about pairing food and wine and are as hungry as I am thinking about this Taste America menu.
Tickets to Taste America
Winemaking is pretty geeky most of the time – pH, Titratable Acid, and Brix roll effortlessly off the tongues of winemakers and into the baffled ears of the rest of us. On blending day, however, the playing field flattens out a bit. Blending wine involves no more tricky numbers than the measurements on the side of a beaker, and no more complex tools than our personal noses and mouths. On Blending Day, the artistic side of winemaking is at its apex.
So, what are you looking for in a blend? The first thing to decide is whether the wines that you have in barrel or tank play well with others. If you are sitting in a cellar full of Pinot Noir and Syrah, for instance, you are probably going to conclude that you are going to produce single varietal Pinots and Syrahs, because in the case of a Pinot-Syrah blend the sum of the parts would be less than the parts themselves. That doesn’t mean you aren’t blending, however. Very often single varietal wines are in fact blends – blends of different vineyards, different barrels, even different winemaking. In that case, what blending should achieve first and foremost is balance. One wants the fruit intensity to be matched by acidity that makes the wine mouth-wateringly delicious. One wants wine that is barrel aged with toasty notes to be balanced with unoaked wine with fresh fruity flavors. Our 2023 Viognier Reserve is an example of this sort of blend. It is sourced from two different vineyards – Nogalero and Lahey Vineyards, both in the Texas High Plains. In addition, 40% of the wine was aged in oak, whereas the rest was not.
Now, let’s say that instead of Pinot Noir, the Syrah in your cellar finds itself alongside barrels of Grenache and Mourvèdre. If so, it should be very happy Syrah indeed, because these are two of its favorite friends. In fact, these are such good friends that Syrah, which otherwise likes to hog the limelight, actually takes a step back and lets the other two strut their stuff. This takes style, which is another thing one is looking for when blending. Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvèdre are the three main components of Rhône-style blends, named after the river valley in southern France, where it has its ancestral home. Each of these grapes brings different ingredients to the blending table: Grenache brings savory, red fruit aromatics and body; Syrah brings vibrant color, tannins and acidity: and Mourvèdre brings velvety dark fruit and soft tannins. Together they are a whole that exceeds the sum of their parts, as is exemplified by the 2021 GSM Mélange. The question for you as Winemaker for the Day, then, is which percentages of each creates a wine that captures the same style in the new vintage. Happy Blending!
Cheers!
Dr. Julie
For a Texan, there are a lot of good reasons to be drinking Texas wine. It is delicious; it is local; and increasingly it is good for the environment. Sustainability was the theme of the annual conference of the Texas Hill Country Wineries Association, held in early February at Horseshoe Bay Resort. At the conference, Pedernales Cellars’ pioneering role in moving toward more sustainable practices was highlighted.
The Kuhlken family that owns Pedernales Cellars has been growing grapes in the Texas Hill Country since 1995. Over the decades, they have experimented with varieties to discover ones that thrive in the Texas climate with the least amount of chemical intervention. Though they started with Bordeaux varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, they have found much better partners to Texas terroir in warm weather varieties such as Tempranillo (originally from Spain) and Rhone varieties, Mourvèdre and Grenache. Knowing what to grow is the first step toward sustainably grown wine.
It is also important to view the vineyard as a complex ecosystem. To this end, Pedernales minimizes water use through ground cover management and promotes natural pest management through the use of local species. Compost from the winery is also recycled into the vineyard. Continuing their good stewardship of the land, the family has removed cedar overgrowth and invasive plant species and reestablished seeps and springs, making a better habitat for native Hill Country wildlife. Owner Dr. Julie Kuhlken likes to think of sustainability in terms of healthy habits. As she puts it, “Whether I exercise today is only marginally important, but if I exercise regularly, it makes a huge difference in the long run. Something similar is true of sustainable practices, each one is only marginally impactful, but taken as a whole, they make for a huge shift in the health of the environment.”
Sustainability is about more than growing wine, it is also about the place and people who make it. When constructing the winemaking facility, the Kuhlken family decided to dig the cellar directly into the hill to form an underground facility that enjoys the natural insulation of limestone and the cooling soil. A geothermal cooling system and CFL and solar lighting reduce energy usage, and a 55,000-gallon tank collects valuable rainwater that is used for landscaping.
On the people side of the winery, Pedernales Cellars is proud to be a majority woman-owned winery that offers health care benefits, PTO, flexible work schedules, and maternity/paternity leave to its staff, including hourly workers. As owner, Dr. Julie Kuhlken puts it, describing the winery’s employment philosophy, “If you create a work environment where women thrive, you are likely creating an environment where everyone thrives.” The results are impressive. Pedernales Cellars has had a woman winemaker since 2015 with the current winemaker being Joanna Wilczoch, a native of New Hampshire who started her wine journey working in Kuhlken Vineyards. The Controller of the company is Livia Schorlemer, a self-styled “Grape Counter.” Cathy Martell is the company’s Direct-to-Consumer Manager and oversees all of the hospitality operations at the winery. If you visit the Tasting Room in Stonewall – and of course, you should! – you are likely to see Cathy’s friendly face greeting you at the door.
So, the next time you are reaching for that Cali Cab at the grocery store, stop and think about the environment. Drinking a local Texas wine from Pedernales Cellars not only reduces the amount of pollution generated from transporting the wine to the shelf but also comes from a winery that is doing its part to make the wine industry greener. Looking ahead, Pedernales Cellars will be making wine from organically grown grapes in the future, so keep an eye out for those on the shelves. It will be one more reason to make a toast to the environment with Pedernales Cellars.