Take a look - Sweet and Sour Grilled Chicken! From Bobby Flay's book Grill It! page 77. This recipe really worked - that traditional "sweet-and-sour" tang really jumped out as a glaze over grilled chicken breasts. I started by combining red wine vinegar, white vinegar, pineapple juice, sugar, a few chopped jalapenos and ginger in a pan over the grill. That came to a boil and I let it simmer and thicken for about 30 minutes. When it started becoming the consistency of syrup, I tossed in cilantro and both red and yellow peppers. That all simmered together for another 15 minutes while I grilled the chicken. I used only canola oil, salt and pepper on the chicken and allowed the grill to char the outside while leaving the inside done - but juicy and tender. I brushed some of the glaze on the chicken from the pan when it was still on the grill, but later poured the glaze and peppers over everything!
What to Drink? We went for the Cline Ancient Vines Mourvedre. We have had it before and love it. The bottle said that it would have aromas of Dark Plum, Chocolate and Oak. This reminded me of a question one of you readers asked not long ago. The question was, "If wine is made from grapes, how is it possible for wine to smell and taste like different fruits?" Good question. Fortunately, I have a friend who teaches Virticulture and has an earned doctorate in wine. That's right, he is a Wine Doctor! I introduced you to Dr. Tony Johnston in a previous blog. Here is how Tony answered the question:
"Wine is fermented by yeasts and bacteria who, as they do their work, add 'extra stuff' to the wine. This extra stuff can be very flavorful. In addition, the yeasts and bacteria are making many chemical changes to the grape juice and fruit which ends up as flavors and odors. Finally, our brains are wired to relate everything we eat to something we're familiar with. Therefore as we smell and taste a wine, we pick up hints of aroma and flavor that remind us of fruits, vegetables and even inedible things we've smelled before. When you combine the fact that our sense of smell is linked to our sense of taste, we can even taste and smell things like tar, tobacco, wet dogs, old leather, and lots of things we'd never dream of licking, much less tasting."
That makes perfect sense right! So the next time you open a bottle, do so without reading the label first. See if you can detect the aromas first then check to see what aromas the label claims it has. When Dorothy and I took Tony's wine appreciation class several year ago, the course had no textbook but it did have an "Aroma Wheel"
I call it the "power of suggestion" wheel because I can start smelling something after I have been told that that particular aroma is possible. The wheel has dozens of possible wine aromas and it divides the aromas into catagories.
The "Fruity" catagory, for instance, lists dried fruit, tree fruit and tropical fruit and subdivides that into individual aromas of melon, apple, raisin, etc. It is very helpful in narrowing down aromas. Tony's class also came with a special glass.
you can lay the glass over without slipping any wine out! This where the movie "sideways" got its name. Over a white cloth, you can now easily see the color of the wine, the clarity, the thickness and of course the aroma. And all this happens before the really good part - tasting the wine!
Trying to identify the aromas and tastes of different wines is part of the fun. You can actually get pretty good at it if you practice. Wine practice! More wine practice and grilling practice to come! Paul
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