Cake and A Movie

I honestly have been meaning to do more blogging, but since I spilled wine on my laptop last month, my access to a computer has been limited. But that isn't really an excuse: I promise more posts more often.

Today's topic is actually something that I stumbled onto last night by accident. We have a few Columbia locals following our twitter feed (@TopTenWines) who dropped by the shop looking for wines to pair with carrot cake (they do a weekly Cake and a Movie event). I blanked a little bit; carrot cake isn't something that I think about very often and my intuitive pairing idea is of course milk. In terms of wine, I suggested the following:
1. Late harvest muscat from Rutherglen in Australia, a decadently jammy dessert wine full of figs and spice.
2. Roussanne from Domaine de Lancyre in the Rhone Valley; a clean, minerally wine with tart fruit and undertones of dusty, spicy minerality.
3. Riesling from Germany. The pure, mineral driven wines made from Riesling are exceptionally versatile, with brisk acidity, pure fruit flavors, and low alcohol.
4. Viognier from Ninet de Pena in southern France. A fat, viscously textured wine with a lot of candied fruit (people have variously identified candied raspberry, banana, and fruit loops as aromatic components).

This afternoon at the shop, Paul suggested German icewine (eiswein), with the theory that sweet wines do well with sweet food. Tays, our representative from Glazer's Midwest, suggested Moscato, the sweet, slightly effervescent wines from Piedmont.

The lesson is of course that most foods are pairable with wine; indeed, it helps to think of wine as a food or condiment. Pairing is an intuitive habit; it's why any kid wants to drink milk with cookies. Of course, this is something that is easiest understood through experience. For people who want to understand food and wine pairing better, my suggestion is simple: Drink more!

If you'd like to hear more about Cake and a Movie, follow our Twitter feed (@TopTenWines).