2007 vintages (see below), and were very positive about how it was all coming out. I got to catch up with Bobby (of Team Bobby fame) and talk some baseball. He's very bullish about his A's now that Frank Thomas is back. Annie, Bobby's sister, is quite the character and keeps everyone on their toes. We also had Danny and Henry in top form showcasing bowling and acrobatic skills throughout the afternoon – who knew that Claire's place could do all of this? J This afternoon, our Purple Teeth Cellars wine website has been upgraded to our first official version. Up until now, it's been more like version 0.5. So, if you haven't yet asked us to put you on our mailing list, please go check it out and sign up. If you have asked us already, you may want to check the options and enroll if you are interested in anything different from the default (already checked) options.
~Marc & Jill
As Marc and I ramp up Purple Teeth Cellars, we are starting to join some organizations that will enable us to meet more people in the industry. One of the groups that Marc wanted to join is AIWF, and they had a private event at someone's home last weekend showcasing some wines from Turley Wine Cellars.
The food and wines for the event were donated by local members and all of the proceeds went towards funding a scholarship for culinary/winemaking studies in WA state. Actually one of the members hosted the event in his home and prepared 7 mini-courses for 12 people, so kudos to Brian!
The good thing about Marc and I is that while we like similar things, we do have different palates. All of the food and wine were awesome, but we were asked at the end of the evening to pick our favorites. So my favorite pairings were:
Marc also enjoyed the Pheasant Tartlets and the Asian Style Pork Ribs as his favorites. In particular, he added that the Pheasant Tartlets pairing was almost floral and earthy at the same time. He also enjoyed another pairing:
With all of this food and wine sampling, it's a good thing I am doing this ½ marathon training. :-)
I have been meaning to update everyone on some of the food and wine pairing that we have been doing outside of our work with Purple Teeth Cellars (2006 tasting notes here and 2007 tasting notes here).
When we were at Whistler last month, we went out for some much needed protein (READ: red meat) after 6+ hours of skiing/snowboarding. After perusing the wine list, we opted for a 2005 Andrew Rich Syrah from Columbia Valley to have with our dinner. The wine was good on its own with some black pepper and blackberries, with a little bit of oak and vanilla. With my steak, I had a béarnaise sauce on the side and Marc had his prepared with a peppercorn sauce. As I ate my meal, I noticed that Marc is clearly not having the same experience as I am with respects to the food and wine pairing. He is not enjoying the wine at all, which is unusual for him with a Syrah. So I cleanse the palate a bit and have a bite of Marc's steak with the wine.
Wow – night and day. The peppercorns with Marc's steak completely took over the wine and basically made it have no discernable taste one way or the other. This was completely different from my experience. The fat from the béarnaise sauce really went well with the Syrah and made the flavors all come out in a positive way. And Marc had a bite of my steak with the béarnaise and really enjoyed the pairing. So when a wine label says that a wine will go well with "fish, chicken or beef", think again. It has nothing to do with the main ingredient; it's more to do with how the main ingredient is prepared both in terms of seasoning and cooking method. We learned about this at the cooking class we took at the CIA last year.
Next food and wine experiment was by completely by chance a couple of weeks later, but yep – it involved red meat again. It was a stressful week, so Marc and I decided to head to one of our favorite haunts on Lake Union – Daniel's Broiler. Erik, who is our friend and the sommelier, found us in the waiting area and whisked us to an awesome table. He noticed that we brought in a 2003 Justin Isosceles from our collection and recommended that we try a ½ bottle of the 2002 Justin Isosceles that they had on the list. At first, I wasn't in favor since I had a 9-mile run the next morning, but then I was reminded that we can re-cork and bring home our wine so we didn't have to consume all that wine. Sweet – a mini wine vertical!
Again, I went with the béarnaise but Marc went without the peppercorns. I was all over the 2002 vintage; the differences between the 2002 and 2003 were significant. The 2003 was much more fruity and had some earthiness to it, while the 2002 was all earthy. The earthiness aroma and flavor went really well with the béarnaise. When we got home, Marc found this great tasting chart from Justin comparing the vintages. All in all, a fun evening and special thanks to Erik for the recommendation to do the ½ bottle. Well worth it.
And in case you are wondering, my NCAA brackets are down the tubes. L
Over the weekend, we tasted from a sample of our 2006 Eaglepoint Ranch Petite Sirah. The tasting notes are on our Purple Teeth Cellars website. The word is that this wine will be a perfect way to start our business!
Last week, we tasted barrel samples from our 2007 Syrahs from Alder Springs and White Hawk. Marc posted our tasting notes yesterday on the Purple Teeth Cellars website. We tasted without any food pairings and then tried the wines with a few different food combinations. Fun stuff. That 'Food and Wine Pairing' class at the CIA really came in handy. Click on 'Our Blog' in the top right corner to get some insights on what is to come!
We'll have tasting notes from our 2006 Petite Sirah in the next few days. Stay tuned!
After the run, it was time to prep for yet another 'Open That Bottle Night' at the house. An 
awesome crew of people with some excellent wines:
So JoAnna and Mary get the award for the best story (prize TBD but it may have to do something with Purple Teeth Cellars – ahem). JoAnna grew up in the Tri-Cities and she had an aspiration to be able to afford to buy wines from a winery close by known as J. Bookwalter. So when she and Mary went there a few years ago, JoAnna just said to Mary that money was going to be spent on a case of wine and that was it. Hmmm….. Apparently this mindset was something new to Mary, but eventually she came around…. Mary stepped up and splurged on a bottle to go along with JoAnna's case. To those not in attendance, let me assure you that the delivery was pretty hilarious, especially because they both tend to like some great labels like Pepper Bridge (my favorite in WA State). And now Marc and I have a new winery in the Columbia Valley to check out because we need to acquire more wine.
Some words about the Kindzmarauli Sapervi Dessert Wine (1997). This was given to me back in 1998 when I hosted my very 1st dinner party back in my shoebox in the West Village by a gentleman named Matt Bartels (now Bartelsian). Now there was a ton of alcohol consumed at this dinner party – one might use the word 'paralytic' to describe the state of things including one person needing to be carried to the cab to get home. I guess that had to do with the sangria that my friend, Ian, and I made. Oops. Anyway we never got to Matt's bottle but I had always vaguely remembered the description as some kind of Armenian cognac thing. Most of the bottle was in the Cyrillic lettering, so I never bothered to really look at it in too much detail. Matt had just gotten engaged to the woman who would become his wife (Ella) and she was Armenian so we didn't give the origins of the bottle much thought except for the fact that it was really cool…. Now this bottle has been in 4 cross-country moves, apartments/condos/houses with different temperature fluctuations, etc. I finally told Marc that we had open this year since I got it 10 years ago and also reconnected with Matt on Facebook. We discovered it was actually a semi-sweet red, which made us even more skeptical of how it was going to taste. It actually tasted pretty nice – not too syrupy, great flavors, etc. I think we are going to do some kind of candle holder thing with the bottle itself. But the wine in the bottle ended up being quite the positive surprise.
My favorite wine of the evening was actually the 2001 Atalon Merlot, which was purchased because Michael wanted to be "anti-Sideways". "Sideways" was the movie that pretty much killed a lot of Merlot producers for a long time because the main character had a personal vendetta against the grape. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy any of the other wines but I had to pick my favorite of the evening. The Lokoyas brought by Sharon and Ralph were superb (BTW, we love that Ralph had an obsessive wine buying phase in the 90s and he is so generous to share with us every year), and the '97 rocked. The Glaetzer from the Ba-ross-a (not Ba-rose-a) Valley was very spicy and the Kistler Chardonnay was perfectly paired with Michael's seafood appetizer of salmon, crab, shrimp, garlic and some other excellent ingredients.
We needed something healthy at some point in the dinner and Sharon came through with an excellent salad that was not only healthy, but tasty. JoAnna 
and Mary came through in the pinch with some fruit pies (liked the key lime one). Shelly and Chris brought a very globally oriented cheese course which included some Drunken Goat (very appropriate). Rebecca made an outstanding twice baked potato dish that could not have gone better with the main course (Brasato al Barolo) and the wines served with dinner, particularly the Lokoya Cabs. And finally, Marc made some kick-a** chocolate truffles from a recipe in Wine Spectator. No leftovers on that one unfortunately.
Fun times…. Thanks to all who trekked to the house for an outstanding evening.
you for assistance. No, these folks are not under 'non-disclosure agreements' for this exercise. We have creative, legal and accounting people already working on some things related to this initiative. Yes, very serious. You're probably saying, "what are those guys [Marc and Jill] up to now?", and we can understand that so I'll explain. Marc and I are going to start making wine and our operation will be known as 'Purple Teeth Cellars' and for you geeks out there, we have already secured the domain (currently links to other site). Come on, as if you had any doubts. :-)
The 'Purple Teeth' name comes from what Marc's teeth look like after he consumes some red wine, which some of you know we like to do on occasion. So we needed to head to SF to meet with our winemaking company, Crushpad. We're a bit late to the 2006 vintage so we chose to "Adopt-A-Barrel" - a Petite Sirah to be more precise from Eaglepoint Vineyards in Mendocino County, CA.
We had a tour given to us by Dave, and I got to get my hands dirty a little bit to get a preview of what to expect when we start the process from scratch for future vintages. And so Cousin Claire, who has been with me for many of my wine adventures, took one for the team and came down for a barrel tasting of our wine. You can always count on Claire for these types of activities (ok, she has helped me in a lot of other ways but clearly the food and wine tasks are her favorite).
More to come on this in the future. Stay tuned, and yes, this is the final post related to the 72-hour trip to SF. Gosh, a lot happened huh?