Tuesday, December 17, 2019




Soup-Pair Bowl

Join us in January for a unique experience. We will be sampling soups and pairing wines with them. Soups and wines aren’t opponents but rather great teammates if you know which ones to pull off the rack and bring to the table!

Soups on the menu will be Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Bisque; Potato; Lentil; Butternut Squash; Bean; and Chicken Noodle. The wines will be a surprise. We must keep the suspense up somehow!

We can tell you the raffle wine will be an Isabella Bobal! 


PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR WINE GLASSES. 

Saturday, January 18, 2020 at 7:00 PM

Evergreen Community Park, 3430 Evergreen Rd, Pittsburgh, PA 15237

 Cost for members or guests:

$20

Please reply before Friday, January 10, 2020 to:



Or you may reply to:

 412-979-6565 or 
412-979-9594

Mail your check, payable to AWS to:

Robert Dering
38 Perry Lane
Pittsburgh PA  15229



Monday, December 16, 2019

Soup and Wine


Soup-Pair Bowl Coming in January! 

The Steelers may not make it to the Super Bowl©, but we’re celebrating anyway. Our next tasting in January will feature a variety of wines paired with some favorite soups. Soup, stew, chili, and chowder are perfect for cold weather, however, pairing wines with your favorite soup recipes can be tricky. We hope to give you some ideas, and some starting points, to help you with your pairings.

If you break down your soup ingredients and view them as you would a pasta sauce or something similar, then your pairings will be easier. For example, consider a bowl of chili. The most common ingredients include tomatoes, beans, and ground beef. So, for a heavy tomato sauce, you would look for a wine with a little less acidity and lighter on the tannin. If your chili is heavy on beans or meat, then you could also try a wine that has more body, like a Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz or a Malbec.

By taking these ideas a little further you can find the right wine match for a variety of soup, stew, chili, and chowder.

Wine Pairings to Get You Started
  • Chicken Noodle Soup would pair with a Pinot Noir or a Chenin Blanc.
  • Cream of Chicken Soup would pair with a Sauvignon Blanc or Viognier.
  • If you’re serving gumbo, consider a Pinot Noir.
  • For French Onion Soup try a Beaujolais, Beaujolais Nouveau or White Burgundy.
  • If you’re serving a Seafood Bisque or stew, try Sauvignon Blanc.
  • Chicken Tortilla Soup will pair well with Spanish wine like a Rioja.
  • New England Clam Chowder needs an oaked Chardonnay.
  • If you like Corn Chowder, dry German Riesling is a great match!
  • For Beef Stew with Vegetables, Cab or Shiraz for red wine lovers; if your preferences are white wines, try Gewürztraminer.

Why are soup and wine considered difficult to pair?

The main reason that soup is considered difficult to pair with wine is texture. Both are liquids. Conventional thinking doesn’t find this an appealing combination, but we are all for debunking myths. So, we’ve come up with a few tips for enjoying a glass of wine with your bowl of soup.

1. Think about the texture other than being liquid: Soup is a broad category of clear soups, smooth and creamy soups, chunky stews and chowders that all have very different textures. As well as texture, consider the soup’s ingredients, much like you would with a pasta sauce.

2. Consider the weight of the soup: Pair the wine with the weight of the soup. Hearty stews and chowders can handle more full-bodied wines than delicate vegetable soups.

3. Sherry is always a great stand-by: Sherry is an excellent staple to consider with a wide range of smooth textured soups. It provides a contrast to the smoothness of the soup. Try a Fino sherry with delicate flavored soups, and a dry Amontillado or Oloroso with soups that are earthy and stronger flavored.

4. Tomatoes don’t like tannin: With tomato-based soups avoid tannic red wines. As tomatoes are naturally high in acid, look for red wines with high acid and not too much tannin. Examples include Italian reds such as Valpolicella or Barbera d’Alba or d’Asti. These wines tend to be fruity, which enhances the tomato flavor of the soup.

5. Cream soups like acidity: With cream soups (such as pea, cauliflower etc.) pick a medium to high acid white. A crisp village Chablis is a good match. Other unoaked chardonnays are also good, as is Albariño from Rías Baixas or a Pinot Grigio from Collio or Alto Adige.

6. Protein based soups are versatile: With protein-based soups containing fish, meat or beans, apply the same rules that apply to pairing wine with any protein dish. The choice of wine varies depending on the texture, spices and other ingredients in the soup.

7. Experiment: This is probably the most important tip. There is no ‘one’ perfect wine for any ‘one’ dish. So much will depend on your own (and your guests’) personal preferences, the occasion and of course your budget.

8. Don’t Panic: The chances are that whatever wine you choose will work fine with your soup. If not, just eat some bread between each spoon of soup and sip of wine. It is not a major crisis.

Keep in mind that there are no hard and fast rules for pairing wine with foods and specifically soups, stews, and the like. However, there are certainly some wines that will go with a pot of soup better than others. So, experiment with some of these and try your own. Let us know if you come up with any others! Use the comments!

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Your Holiday Update!




Before we get too “wrapped up” in the Holiday Season, your Board members wanted to bring you up to date on what we accomplished in 2019!  We hope that your year was as wonderful as ours was!

When we met last January and checked our email, we found a surprise! A Hollywood agent had stumbled upon the AWS-Pittsburgh blog, loved our story, and offered us a small fortune to write the history of the chapter and threw in a movie deal to boot! We even got the final say on who is to play the board members in the film!

The agent has become a good friend and visits with us often, in our new luxury log home on our own private lake in Zelienople. (Yes, we’re putting your dues to good use.) It’s so peaceful there. Bob has a top of the line wood shop where he builds custom wine racks that he donates to families in need. (Those Ikea racks that poor people use are so tacky!) He’s also furnished our Vintage Hospice House with hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces. Vintage House provides luxury accommodations for patients and their families in the event of any wine emergencies and is staffed by nurses who have WSET Level III certification.

When Santina isn’t busy writing and overseeing movie project, she spends her days with her private tutor. How lucky we are that Fabio was available and willing to come live in the Hospice!  Fresh from Milano, Fabio is teaching Santina to speak Milanese Italian (so that she can read Northern Italian wine labels), and would you believe he is a former male model?  Those two have such a good time together! When he isn't teaching Santina, Fabio enjoys swimming laps in the indoor pool. She just loves to watch him swim. Don't worry. We don't let her near the pool unsupervised!

With all the celebrities carrying five-pound Yorkies around in a tote bag, Kevin has succumbed to the trend. It's hard to carry off both the tattoos and a “Yorkie in a poke”, but she manages. She has also started the Occupy Ross Township project! The platform is demanding equal cellar values with our upscale neighboring towns. We’ve all pitched tents in our front lawns, stopped taking showers and throw used corks at the police. It brings a tear to your eye.

John still hasn't had his identity stolen. He tried to auction it off on Ebay, but without a computer, it wasn’t a success. A very nice Prince from Nigeria contacted him and started up a mail correspondence. He promises to totally change John’s financial profile.

Since Terry now off house arrest, he’s gotten several interesting offers. The most exciting opportunity, though, was the offer to restock The Vatican’s wine cellar.  They asked him to get rid of all those dusty, old wines and replace them with some of his brand new award-winning homemade wine!  He refused, though, as it would have taken six or seven weeks, and he didn’t want to miss our January and February tastings!

Thom was able to get funding for research that led to a cure for oenocenosillicaphobia! (Wine glasses are refillable!) You can also thank him for discovering that the combination of wine and cheesecake, when taken together, in large quantities, have dramatic health benefits. Who knew? The cheesecake blocks damage to your liver, and the wine flushes out the calories in the cheesecake. Why this wasn't realized years ago is a shame.

So, that was our 2019. 

We hope that yours was just as awesome. Can't wait for 2020!

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

La Vigilia








Eating Seven Fishes Christmas Eve!

 

When the Christmas shopping frenzy finally settles down, it’s time to focus on the most important parts of the holiday season - family, food and wine! Many families partake in the Feast of the Seven Fishes dinner, and most use a variety of seafood styles throughout the meal. We’ve heard of one of our favorites, a crab cake appetizer, that made the menu. But, that’s the beauty of this fish feast, there are no rules as to what you must cook, which gives the chef freedom to be creative. But it also makes pairing the right wines a little tricky.
To give an exact wine pairing for the feast is difficult, as there are dozens of different ways to prepare each of type of seafood. It’s more about the consistency and texture of the fish and the sauces. For example, an appetizer of raw oysters and clams will need a far different wine than Clams Casino or fried oysters. Below are some easy and general wine pairings for various styles of seafood that you might serve for your seven fishes feast.
RAW/CHILLED SEAFOOD:

The general rule of thumb is the lighter the dish, the lighter the wine.  Try a Sancerre for this paring. The minerality in these high acid, citrus flavor wines seem to bring out all the flavors and freshness in any chilled seafood dish. A dry, high acid Finger Lakes Riesling will also work with all those raw bar goodies. Pinot Grigio is a popular light white wine for this part of the meal, but, unless it’s very good, it’s a little too neutral. But if Pinot Grigio is your choice, try one from the Collio region.
BAKED/FRIED SEAFOOD:
For dishes like baked cod or seared scallops, you still want to keep it light but with a bit more body. Albariño can work well as these wines still have that acidity but have more body and structure. Chablis is a solid option too, as these typically unoaked wines made from Chardonnay have all the qualities we love about Chardonnay, but without the oak influence.
 If your fish is getting fried, you’ll have to step up to bigger whites like Burgundies or California Chardonnays, and here is when you can start trying the reds. The thicker and heavier the batter, the bolder you can go on the wine. Lighter Chianti Classico and Pinot Noir can work for a delicate sautéed dish, but if you are going with the deep fryer don’t be afraid to pull out a Zinfandel or Syrah, especially if you’re cooking something with a little spice in it.
SEAFOOD WITH PASTA:

For openers, make sure you use the same color wine as you do for the sauce. For white sauce dishes, like linguine with white clam sauce, you can still use the same Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc as you served for the raw/chilled seafood. But, for something a little different, try an Italian white for these dishes and go with a quality Soave (made from the Garganega grape) or even a Lacryma Christi.
This wine’s name means “Tears of Christ” and comes from an ancient story. There are many variations, but in the Italian version of this myth, Lucifer was cast out of heaven. As he fell towards earth, he grabbed a chunk of heaven. When he reached the ground, he dropped it on the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. When Jesus saw this, he wept. Those tears ran down the mountain and were made visible to humans in the streaks of lava flows down the sides of Vesuvius. When Christ’s tears finally reached the ground, vineyards grew at those spots. The wine has hints of citrus fruit, pineapple and peach and good minerality due to the volcanic soils.

Red sauce equals red wine, preferably something  a little high on the acid scale. Tomato sauce is high in acid so you’ll want a wine that can match it allowing the food and wine to complement one another. A quality Barolo or Chianti Classico Riserva are excellent choices.  
HEARTY SEAFOOD:

This is also a sauce-based pairing in terms white or red wine, but because lobster, king crab, swordfish, etc. can be very meaty and weighted, you can try red for both sauce options. An oaky Chardonnay with a broiled fish and white wine or butter-based sauce can be over the top in terms of oak aging (as many of the California Chardonnays are). The acidity and fruit should stay in balance. Try a Finger Lakes Chardonnay or a Pouilly-Fuissé.
If your bacala is swimming in a sea of marina sauce, you can stay with the same red options from the pasta course. However, here’s where you can expand into some of the bigger reds, as those meaty seafood selections can hold up to the weight of those dishes. A Super Tuscan or Brunello would be the traditional big red pairings, but if you have been waiting to open one of your aged Bordeaux or Napa wines, this is the time to do it.
Whatever you do, make sure to open something special in the good company of family and friends this Christmas, as that is always the BEST pairing of the season.