What we’re about
“A real friend reaches for your hand and puts a wine glass in it.” – Unknown
The Perfect Pair aspires to aide group members in making better choices when buying wine from a favorite retailer, ordering wine when out with friends, or matching a favorite dish with a tasty wine selection.
Pairing food and wine is not magic or an art. It’s part chemistry, part physical, and part psychological. We’ll explore how our brains synthesize hundreds of datapoints through our five senses: taste, aroma, touch, sight, and sound. And how instantaneously, our brains let us know if we’ve “hit it out of the park”, if the pairing is just “OK”, or if it’s “nice try, but better luck next time”.
We’ll learn to utilize common industry tasting notes and scoring systems like the Davis 20-point tasting scale. We’ll develop our wine and food description vocabulary. And with this new vocabulary, we’ll apply culinary tools to identify ingredients that should go together nicely.
We’ll call on our creative self to try new ideas and combinations that might surprise us (I know people who swear by Cheetos and Sancerre). We’ll share our observations, perceptions, likes, and dislikes. And we’ll practice.
Along the way, we’ll meet some awesome folks, learn more than we ever thought possible about the foods we eat, and develop confidence in our ability to make great wine choices.
The goal of the meetup is to learn something new, meet like-minded people, and have fun. Whether you’re a foodie newbie or just learning about wine, the intent is to create a welcoming and supportive group. We’ll tend to follow a meetup agenda, but the timeline is, and will remain, loosely structured to allow plenty of opportunities for questions and sharing.
The organizer is a wine industry veteran with stints in sales, winemaking, and executive roles. He served as winemaker for Napa Wine Company where was instrumental in the production of wine for brands like Pahlmeyer, Staglin Family, Benziger, and others. Later, as VP Wine Production for the Jackson Family, he oversaw 30+ powerful brands like Kendall-Jackson, La Crema, Cambria and others. He is currently studying Culinary Arts continuously learning at College of the Desert.
