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Thanksgiving Wines

The biggest challenge for the Thanksgiving chef is the turkey. If it is cooked too much it will be dry, not enough and it will be un-servable. Perfect timing in the oven shows its delicate and subtle flavors best.

Turkey is not a fatty foul. Astringents found in red wine, known as tannins, go well with fatty foods. Oak and grape tannins found in red wine will dominate your taste buds and overwhelm delicate, lean cuts of meat like turkey (and fish too).

Red wine is the popular choice for fine dining, but at Thanksgiving a chilled glass of riesling is the perfect accompaniment for the dishes served. Riesling compliments turkey by contrasting its earthy, delicate flavor with an exotic, lush presence. Turkey requires attentive preparation, so why foil the cook’s efforts with a tannic red that negates its flavor?

There are many white wines regal enough to sit on our Thanksgiving table. Look to Alsace, France for quality riesling, pinot gris, and gewürztraminer. Of course German rieslings are wonderful with turkey, but if you’re looking for something drier, New Zealand offers zesty rieslings that contain no residual sugar.

Watch out for whites that have been stored in new oak barrels. Pass on the California-style chardonnay aged in new oak barrels. Instead consider ‘unwooded’ choices such as French Chablis or new world virgin chardonnay from Australia or New Zealand.

If you must drink red wine, consider the barely tannic Beaujolais. Versions from the Cru Villages are excellent quality. Pinot Noir can be a good choice too, but be wary of tannic, old world styles. Cabs, zins, syrahs, and merlots are too robust for the delicate fowl. Their tannins will overwhelm the subtle flavors of the meal.

White such as viognier, torrontes, albarino, pinot gris, gewürztraminer, and gruner veltliner have the complexity to handle the traditional Thanksgiving menu. Sparkling wine and Champagne are good candidates too.

Dry Rosé is another wonderful choice for this traditional meal. 'Pink wine,' as the Europeans call it, offers floral, delicate strawberry and raspberry flavors. Pink wine also pairs well with ham and other pink foods. It is also the wine to pair with leafy salads. Consider sparkling rose as well.

Regardless of your budget, there are white, rose’, and light red wines with enough stature for even the most elaborate spreads. You may have to educate your “big red” only guests, but most will welcome the synergy of a fine wine and food pairing that will be remembered long after the meal is over.

(Reproduced with permission of RedWhiteandRose.com)

Be sure to see our FEATURE WINES category, where we highlight our monthly favorites. These wines are also offered at an extra-discounted “sale” price during the month that they are featured.

We can also personally help you with your wine selections by providing us with some information concerning your individual wine preferences, and we will surprise you with our PERSONAL SELLER MIX , a customized selection of a specific wine or Mix Pack to meet your needs.

If there is a specific wine that you are seeking, which is not offered in our Wine Store product selection, just send us a CUSTOMER SPECIAL ORDER and we will do our best to find that wine for you from one of our many fine Colorado distributors.

Be sure to check our special pricing and volume discounts available in the TERMS & CONDITIONS tab before ordering to take advantage of our best price options.

Specialty Beer Alternative

The Specialty Beer Alternative

Over the holidays wine is a very popular and nice gift. However, there is a whole pantheon of highly crafted beers, which fit that bill just as well as wines do, and can be an interesting twist on the standard holiday events.

Beer with Holiday Foods

Beginning with Thanksgiving, pairing your meal to your beverage can be an interesting and fun dilemma. Instead of, or along with, your Riesling, try a Belgian or French style farmhouse/saison bottle of beer. This dry and earthy style will not compete with a tender and delicate turkey, but the carbonation and piquant spicing will balance and cleanse your palate with heavier and stronger flavors such as cranberry relish.

A Belgian style white ale, or a German style Heffweisen would also work very well for the same meal, and may be more accessible for people who are uncomfortable with the thought of higher alcohol beers. These two wheat beers are also great palate cleansers to sip on between dinner and your pie.

If you would like a change of pace beverage as an aperitif or to go with some cheeses or crudités you have put out for your guests, try a dry English cider. This is not the sweet and syrupy cider most of us are used to, but a very light and crisp sparkling beverage. Some of the best cider makers own their own orchards, and the quality shows in the final product. These ciders provide a wonderful apple flavor to counter buttery and or nutty chesses. It also gives you a high quality and affordable option for a sparkling drink, without the pomp and circumstance associated with Champagne.

Winter Beer Options

If you are looking for another option other than some of the robust red wines we all enjoy in the colder months, look to Quadruples, Guezes and Lambic style beers. True to form examples of these styles are wild fermented high alcohol beers. The alcohol level generally varies between 8% and 12% putting them a step below most wines you may serve, but still enough high quality fermentation to provide the gentle warming that we enjoy. Quadruples usually have a minor amount of fruit added to the brew, to produce a sweet and tart effect in a rich and well rounded beer. Use this one instead of a fruity Pino Noir. Lambics, such as Krieks and Frambois, are fermented with more fruit, usually cherries or raspberries, and have a much more juicy and berry driven flavor. A Gueze is a wild fermented and blended beer. This style tends to be dark color with an intricate and tart flavor. Because there are no exact rules on what makes a Geuze, they can vary widely in their flavor break down, but they all make for an interesting and unique beer experience. Try serving these beers to your guests without telling them what they are; many of them will not believe that they are actually drinking a beer.

Finally, for a twist on Champagne or other bubbly, try a Beer Du Brut. These fascinating beers are generally a dry slightly sweet beer, fermented with a Champagne yeast, and some times actually caved as well. This produces a beautiful glass with the common thin strings of tiny bubbles, and an effervescent and lifting drinking experience. The grain used in the beer creates a nuttiness and rounded flavor that is a great change of pace.

Possibly best of all, even the best examples of these beers can be purchased for $10.00 to $25.00. Not only can you marvel your friends and family with interesting and unique flavors, but you can do it without breaking your budget.

http://www.bigbeersfestival.com/index.html

Be sure to see our FEATURE BEERS category, where we highlight our monthly favorites. These beers are also offered at an extra-discounted “sale” price during the month that they are featured.

We can also personally help you with your wine selections by providing us with some information concerning your individual wine preferences, and we will surprise you with our PERSONAL SELLER MIX , a customized selection of a specific beer or Mix Pack to meet your needs.

If there is a specific wine that you are seeking, which is not offered in our Beer Store product selection, just send us a CUSTOMER SPECIAL ORDER and we will do our best to find that wine for you from one of our many fine Colorado distributors.

Be sure to check our special pricing and volume discounts available in the TERMS & CONDITIONS tab before ordering to take advantage of our best price options.

Big Beer, Belgians and Barleywines Festival in Vail

On January 10th, the ninth annual Big Beer, Belgians and Barleywines Festival was held in Vail, CO. Here are a few notes and observations from my couple days there. This was started in 2001 by Brother and Sister Laura and Bill Lodge from Vail. They have worked had to make the Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival a world class event, showcasing higher alcohol and highly crafted Beer. One of the few rules for the tasting is that a brewery should only pour beer above 7% alcohol, which means everything the participants taste, will be special in some way.

Commercial Tasting:

This is where the entire event spawned from. This year over 70 different breweries were represented pouring more than 250 different beers. Breweries from all over the country flock to a ball room to show off the most interesting and creative libations they have in their repertoire. While you could get lost in the other activities and sessions of this event, the commercial tasting is the star of the weekend. Obviously people were excited about this, because the room was packed from opening to “last call.” Not only are you getting to taste some of the best beers in the world, but brewers, owners and impassioned and knowledgeable volunteers are pouring the beer. You are able to learn more about the craft brew world than you ever knew existed.

Experimental Beer Competition:

Each year a few brewers are selected to produce one experimental beer each. This feature fosters a creative, hands-on spirit to the event. The brewers hold a seminar explaining their brewing process and answer questions so beer aficionados, both new and seasoned, have a great opportunity to get further education in the art of craft beer. This year the entries were: “Obamanator” from the Wynkoop Brewery, “Torpedo Pale” from Sierra Nevada, “Coffee Porter” from Flying Fish, and “Double Rye IPA” from Anheuser-Busch. Obamanator had been created for the Democratic National Convention in Denver this past year, and shows the Wynkoop brewery’s commitment to quality and topicality. Sierra Nevada has long crafted quality beer with great hop character, and Torpedo follows in that vein with a fresh and citrusy spice. This was the first foray into coffee flavored beer for Flying Fish, and they have done very well, showing off a great coffee character without dominating the beer. It was great to see a large brewer such as A-B take this seriously and put a great product out, and let their very talented brewers show off their creativity.

Brewmaster Dinners:

There were two evenings featuring five course dinners which were organized as a three part collaboration between two breweries and a chef. One night was a joint effort between Avery and Dogfish Head breweries and Chef Mercer Mohr from the Vail Marriot. The other put together Russian River Brewing, Flying Dog Brewery and Darrel Jensen of Centre V. The challenge was to pair two beers and a food together into one culinary experience for each course. The concept of food –pairing is a wonderful new realm for highly crafted beers which is just being discovered, and explored. These events are spectacular with obvious effort put into both the cuisine and logistics. For anyone contemplating attending the festival, at least one of these dinners should be high on your list.

The role of The Wine Underground at this event was to expose participants to the Club Underbrew, the beer-of-the-month club of our retail company. We did give away two club memberships to:

Ron of Carlsbad, CA

Lauren of Grand Junction, CO

And here are a few links that you may enjoy:

Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival:

Beer Buckle, you will want one:

http://www.thebeerbuckle.com/The-Beer-Buckle_c_1.html

Metromix review:

http://denver.metromix.com/events/photogallery/cheers-big-ears-to/888552/content

Karl Broman

Manager of Beergistics

PORT WINE SEASON IS HERE!

PORT WINES

History

The Douro River descends the Pyrenees Mountains and meanders west across the Iberian Peninsula, eventually emptying into the Atlantic ocean. This region with thousands of years of history is not only a famous sea port, but has an ancient wine industry. Portugal's presence in the global wine market is best known for its fortified wine. Wine has been shipped all over Europe for hundreds and hundreds of years through Oporto, Portugal. Before the days of refrigeration wine had issues with spoilage, so its journey was often very short.

One day a few hundred years ago, a clever ship's captain poured a little distilled spirits into a barrel of wine. His experiment changed the wine industry. The addition of spirits is called fortifying. This stabilizes the wine, enabling it to travel long distances. Wine from the port of Oporto became an icon around the world. It was fortified wine that was able to withstand long voyages, often through warm seas, reaching all the obscure corners of the New World and Asia.

Many wine producers create fortified wines today. In order to be a true Port, or Porto, it must come from the area cradling the Rio Douro in Portugal. All other fortified wines are called dessert or fortified, without the Porto moniker.

Wine-Making

Porto is a blend of two or more of these wine grapes, Touriga Nacional, Tinto Cão, Tinta Barroca, Tinta Roriz, and Touriga Francesa. Porto is not labeled by a year unless the region declares the harvest exceptional. In these declared years some of the grapes will be set aside to be vinified separately. This Port will be bottled as a "vintage Port," stating that particular year on the label. The rest of the grapes will be vinified and blended into the Port producer's non-vintage house label. Some grapes are vinified and added to the barrels aging the Tawny Ports every harvest. (This technique of non-vintage house blends and vintage years is used in Champagne as well.)

Tawny Ports are made from grapes vinified and aged in oak barrels for many years. Slow evaporation causes the wine to become tawny colored, taking on a nutty flavor. The producer labels the bottle with the average age of wine in the barrel, which is why the older versions are significantly pricier. Tawny Ports are bottled in 10, 20, 30, and 40 year old quantities.

Ruby Ports are a young expression of the same grape varietals. Rubies are not aged for very long and have a red color and a flavor similar to very jammy red wine. This red color is retained because they are not exposed to oxygen and barrels for as long as Tawnies. They are generally inexpensive. Late Bottle Vintage, or LBV is a Port aged for a longer time than Ruby Port, usually four to six years, but are aged much shorter than Tawny Ports. They can be more complex than a Ruby Port and are also fairly inexpensive.

There is another category of Tawny Port with its own production rules called Colheita. Colheita is a single vintage Tawny Port, aged in barrels for a minimum of seven years before bottling. This special Tawny is permitted to use a year on the label. Colheita used to be called 'Port of the Vintage' with a year appended to the statement. Now they are called Single Harvest Year Port, Harvest Dated Port, and Single Harvest Reserve. No blending is done with Colheita Ports.

While many Ports require a significant investment in your bottle of wine, there is nothing better than the sweet, succulent dessert quality of a smooth Port to top off your dinner, end your evening in front of a fire, or enjoy with a fine cigar.

MICRODISTILLING WITH LEOPOLD BROTHERS

Aging Barrels

So-- What is microdistilling? and Who are the Leopold Brothers?

Microdistilling is comparable to microbrewing in the beer industry--- Very small producers hand-crafting recipes and distilling small batches of very fine quality, limited quantity, boutique liquors. It is the latest trend in the liquor industry. Many of these fine distillations are currently available only in their local areas, and like many microbrews and limited production wineries, some of these brands have developed cult-like followings. One of these is Leopold Brothers in Denver, Colorado.

The Leopold Brothers have a very interesting history themselves. Just within the past year, they moved their operation from Ann Arbor, Michigan back to Denver, their home state. Both Scott and Todd Leopold had been students at Columbine High School in the south suburban metro area. After going their separate ways for education, Scott as an environmental engineer at Stanford University, and Todd as a Brewmaster trained in Germany, they reunited to open a brew pub in Ann Arbor. Asked how they got into distilling, they explained that the laws in Michigan for brew pubs required that you could serve only what you make. Since they needed a more full scale bar, they began making distilled spirits also. However, the slow arduous legal and regulatory climate in Michigan compare to the friendly small business climate of Colorado, eventually drew them back home.

They now make 14 different distilled products at Leopold Brothers (all are represented on the Wine Underground website www.wineundergroundgo.com ). They are all made of specially selected fresh ingredients, and all are absolutely delicious. Todd is a Master Distiller, who received his brewery and distillery training in Germany and apprenticed in Germany under the #1 Distiller in the World. “As a distiller, you have to know about every aspect of what you use in your business—all of the different herbs, where they come from, what their effect is, how they interact. We also have to know everything about all of our fruits, coffees, and other ingredients—for example, where is the best location for obtaining certain ingredients in different seasons? “

Another part of the microdistillery process is the attention to the type of distilling equipment that is used. The distiller at Leopold Brothers is a hand-hammered copper pot imported from Germany. It is only a 40 gallon capacity, with each batch producing from 180 to 300 bottles. Each bottle is hand-numbered.

Leopold Brothers only still

Many of the Leopold Brothers products are world-class liqueurs, blended with at least three pounds of fruit per bottle from the best regional producers: Rocky Mountain Blackberry, New York Sour Apple, New England Cranberry, Rocky Mountain Peach, Michigan Tart Cherry, Three Pins Alpine Herbal, and French Press Coffee. These are delicious on the rocks, over ice cream, or as ingredients in many other recipes. Of the seven liqueurs they produce, they have earned 6 Gold Medals, and 1 Silver Medal from the Beverage Tasting Institute, the standard for blind tastings in the spirits world.

Leopold Brothers liquors include Rocky Mountain Blackberry Whiskey, Rocky Mountain Peach Whiskey, and New York Sour Apple Whiskey, all blended with real fruit and aged in charred bourbon barrels. The Silver Tree Vodka, Small-batch Gin, and Single Barrel Dark Rum make up the classic spirits line-up. The most unique Leopold product is the Absinthe Verte, hand-made in the European tradition of the 19^th century, with the traditional absinthe herbs and botanicals added into the high-alcohol spirit. Very little absinthe tastes this natural and soothing.

Bottom Line?------ “Small Colorado distillery makes Big world-class artisan spirits!”

To learn more, go to www.Leopoldbros.com

A sample of the varieties available from Leopold Brothers