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.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- Farming for Flavor (Terroir Explained)75797 Cam Cielo, Indian Wells, CA$40.00
“A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.” Louis Pasteur
A place is a place … is a place… is a place… right? But maybe not when we’re talking about wine, or cheese, or coffee, or tea, or chocolate, or beef, or… you get the idea.
To Europeans, where and how food is grown, the topography, the climate, how a product is produced, and even how it’s consumed is critical to what separates one product from another.
“Terroir” is the French term that describes influences differentiating one wine from another. it’s becoming a term more popular with chefs as they explore nuances in ingredients and where and how they are grown highlighted by the growing “farm to table” movement.
In this Meetup we’ll be introduced to the theory behind “Terroir” and explore several examples to see if we can identify meaningful differences.
We’ll begin the event with a short presentation to define terroir and then conduct a “blind” tasting of wines selected for the evening. We’ll be covering up the label while tasting to make sure we’re being honest and objective.
Chardonnay is the wine choice of the evening. We’ll be conducting our education by evaluating wines from France’s Burgundy region. This area is home to some of the most expensive wines in the world. (For fun: You can currently buy a 2018 Romanee-Conti Montrachet for the bargain price of $12,000. If that’s too rich, you can buy the empty bottle/label on EBay for only $499).
We’ll explore Chardonnays produced in Macon-Villages to Puligny-Montrachet to Chablis and discuss the differences, maybe answer the question why one costs $20 while another costs $80 or more.
Then we’ll turn our attention to cheese focusing on Brie. We’ll test whether we can taste significant differences between a “AOC” from France Brie compared to one “Produced in France or California.
We’ll wrap up the evening with a classic food pairing for White Burgundy.
The cost for the event is $40.00. Please RSVP and pay by Venmo to Lynne Ryno@Lynne-Ryno or mail a check to Jack Ryno, 75797 Camino Cielo, Indian Wells, CA 92210 to confirm your spot at the event. You will be categorized as “not coming” until payment is received. I will confirm your spot once payment is received. There are fourteen seats available.
Please bring your own wine glasses. I highly recommend six glasses (6) for this event. If you don’t have any, click on the link to an inexpensive set of eight offered for $15.99 by Amazon https://tinyurl.com/yb455u3w. The box is also a handy way to transport glasses to and from tastings.
