The answer to the question above is yes, but only a little bit. You have probably heard this before from anybody who has traveled to Ireland – that Guinness here is mediocre but fantastic in Ireland. Why would this be the case? People will tell you that Guinness doesn’t travel well, but that’s wrong. I know this because I can tell no difference between Guinness in London and Guinness in Fredericksburg, and London is much closer to Dublin. My theory is that the domestic recipe is slightly different, or perhaps they use higher quality ingredients, but the bigger explanation is Context. Context is very important with wine and beer but usually ignored.

I often have people tell me about how they just can’t find this wine they had in France/Italy/Spain or wherever, but it was so amazing. I’m sure the wine was good, but probably not that good. Part of how a wine tastes has to do with where we are. If you are in a bar in Paris or near the beach in Barcelona, you want that wine to taste good. How you feel will actually affect the flavor. You might think Sherry is gross, but if you’re on the beach in southern Spain, the Mediterranean breeze hitting your face, that salty Sherry will taste like the beautiful sea itself. This is what elevates wine and beer (whiskey too, I suppose) above other beverages – it is an experience, not just a drink. That’s why wine has this ability sometimes to bring back memories or transport us to another place. It’s the beauty of the beverage. When you’re in a cozy pub in Ireland, on vacation, chatting away with a friendly Irishman, of course that Guinness is going to taste better than the can you had at home.

Remember context the next time you search out a wine or beer you had on vacation – you will probably be disappointed. But the good news is that the European wines and beers you get here are just good as those in Europe. They will only seem not as good, at least at first. I never had a beer in England better than the J.W. Lees beers available right here. And California wine tastes exactly the same in London as it does in Napa as it does in Fredericksburg.

So the next time you are deciding whether you like a wine/beer or not, remember the context in which you are trying it. Guinness tastes better in Ireland, Scotch tastes better in Edinburgh, Chianti tastes better in Tuscany, and nowhere does Virginia wine taste better than in Virginia.

It’s always fun picking out a wine each week to go with our Sunday dinners. It gives us a chance to test our own pairing skills. This last Sunday we decided to do something different and pick out some beers to go with dinner. This inspired me to cook with beer a little too. So I made some Asian-inspired mussels cooked in Belgian white ale (a Belgian wheat beer brewed with spices). I won’t give you the recipe because this might end up on the wine bar menu at some future point, but basically I cooked a mixture of rice vinegar, curry paste, soy sauce, fish, sauce, and a few herbs and vegetables. Then I cooked the mussels in Floris Wit, a Belgian White ale. After the mussels were cooked I removed them, then poured the mixture back into the ale. Then I poured all that back over the mussels. The results are on the picture shown. Kyle tried pairing them with different beers, and of course the Floris was the best pairing.

Then I cooked some burgers, half pork burgers and half bison burgers. These weren’t just any burgers, though. I cooked some chopped pancetta and then mixed it in with the ground meat. Then I added fresh thyme, salt, and pepper. It’s a bit more work, but you get much more flavor than with a regular burger. Rebecca paired hers with the Affligem Blonde, a Belgian abbey golden ale. Kyle went with the Allagash Tripel, a Belgian-style Tripel, or ‘triple’ ale that’s strong, malty and spicy. Allagash brewery is based in Maine but makes Belgian ales. I went with the La Moneusse Saison, also from Belgium. A Saison is a French/Belgian farmhouse ale that’s brewed and then left to age for a few months. I knew it would pair well because it has an earthy taste, and whether it’s beer or wine it’s the ones with earthy flavors that usually pair the best with food.

Our beer dinner was fun, we recommend trying it yourself. All the beers I mentioned are available at both stores. Here’s a challenge to everybody: If you’re normally a wine drinker, pair a dinner with beer this week. If you’re a beer drinker, try a wine as your next pairing. As always, we’re happy to make suggestions.

Bill and Minnie Walker have a home in Florida, but they spend their summer months as US State Park camp hosts. In return for a minimum of six hours of work, five days a week, camp hosts in Virginia’s state parks can save hundreds of dollars with free c…

Our August meeting is fast approaching.  The style of the month is Mead.  Mead is a fermented alcoholic beverage made of honey, water, and yeast.  It’s also the oldest fermented alcoholic beverage.  I don’t know about you, but …

Kyle was really onto something when he selected the Chateau Recougne Bordeaux Blanc as his favorite for the July Six for Sixty, Staff Favorites. Not only is it a lovely bottle, it’s representative of the outstanding white bordeaux coming out of France now. There’s a great article in today’s New York Times on the changes in Graves, Bordeaux and in the winemaking that have resulted in so many super values. Many of the producers have impeccable reputations and long histories.

This French white wine uses sauvignon blanc, semillon and muscadelle. The wines are usually crisp and dry with aromas of figs, flowers, honey and grass. The sauv blanc delivers the acidic crispness, the semillon rounds out the wine with a rich honey flavour, and the early-ripening muscadelle adds lush fruitiness. Richly perfumed but as dry as the gravelly soil that names their home, these wines are dangerously quaffable.

We have several selections in each of the kybecca shops, in addition to the Chateau Recougne.

Come on in and meet your new favorite white wine.

The vast majority of wine is made between 30 and 50 degrees latitude, and then only in countries that have the right climate for it. But there are a few countries out there that try to eek out whatever wine they can, and you may be surprised. Here are a few:

– England. It turns out that the soil in southern England is nearly identical to the soil in Champagne and other regions of northern France. The tricky thing is all the cloud cover they get (not too much rain, as you might think. Actually southern England gets very little rain). But recently summers have been longer and warmer. Don’t be too surprised if you start seeing English sparkling wine showing up in America one day.

– Denmark The Danes will tell you that their country is too cold to make wine, but somehow a little bit does get made. I once saw a Danish wine called “Viking’s Blood”. I didn’t try it.

– China Chinese wine may one day be common. In parts of the country the climate is excellent for growing grapes. But they don’t have a tradition of wine making. Now with all the newly rich in China and a growing taste for wine, some investors are hiring consultants from Europe to help them start growing grapes. In 20 or 30 years I wouldn’t be surprised to see Chinese wine crack the market.

Uruguay – Why should Argentina and Chile get all the attention? We have an excellent Sauvignon Blanc from Uruguay available.

Israel – Many people are aware that Lebanon produces wine, but Israel does too in the Golan Heights region.

Slovenia – Actually, Slovenia produces a lot of wine, you just don’t see it too often in American stores. And Slovenian oak is commonly used by Italian winemakers.

Once upon a time in America, not so long ago, holding a glass of wine that could be mistaken for White Zinfandel was considered a social death sentence. Drinking pink was a clear admission that you knew nothing about wine, or worse…that you had lousy taste in wine. In recent years, the newspapers and the magazines started in on rosé wines, and every summer there were suggestions from those in-the-know that, perhaps, drinking pink was no longer so uncool. Thank goodness we’ve turned a corner on this (much to the amazement of the French, who have long known the pleasures of rosé). In fact, pink wine is becoming the new symbol of hipness.

A rosé wine has some of the color typical of a red wine, but only enough to turn it pink. The colors can range from a pale salmon, deep rust, rose-petal pink to a vivid near-purple, depending on the grapes and wine making techniques.

How rosé is made: 1. Skin contact – red-skinned grapes are crushed and the skins are left in contact with the juice for a short period, from a few hours to a few days. The grapes are then pressed and the skins discarded, rather than left in contact during fermentation(as with red wine making). The longer that the skins are left in contact with the juice, the more intense the color of the wine. 2. Saignée – or bleeding, is used when the winemaker desires to impart more tannin and color to a red wine, and removes some pink juice from the unfermented juice at an early stage, in a process known as “bleeding the vats”. The juice is then fermented separately, producing the rosé as a by-product of the red wine. 3. Blending – not a commonly used method, the simple mixing of red wine to a white to impart color, This method is discouraged in most wine growing regions now (except for Champagne). Even in Champagne, many producers do not use this method.

More later….

Once upon a time in America, not so long ago, holding a glass of wine that could be mistaken for White Zinfandel was considered a social death sentence. Drinking pink was a clear admission that you knew nothing about wine, or worse…that you had lousy taste in wine. In recent years, the newspapers and the magazines started in on rosé wines, and every summer there were suggestions from those in-the-know that, perhaps, drinking pink was no longer so uncool. Thank goodness we’ve turned a corner on this (much to the amazement of the French, who have long known the pleasures of rosé). In fact, pink wine is becoming the new symbol of hipness.

A rosé wine has some of the color typical of a red wine, but only enough to turn it pink. The colors can range from a pale salmon, deep rust, rose-petal pink to a vivid near-purple, depending on the grapes and wine making techniques.

How rosé is made:

Skin contact – Red-skinned grapes are crushed and the skins are allowed to remain in contact with the juice for a short period, from a few hours to a few days. The grapes are then pressed, and the skins are discarded rather than left in contact throughout fermentation (as with red wine making). The longer that the skins are left in contact with the juice, the more intense the color of the wine.

Saignée – or bleeding, is used when the winemaker desires to impart more tannin and color to a red wine, and removes some pink juice from the unfermented juice at an early stage, in a process known as “bleeding the vats”. The juice is then fermented separately, producing the rosé as a by-product of the red wine.

Blending – not a commonly used method, the simple mixing of red wine to a white to impart color, This method is discouraged in most wine growing regions now (except for Champagne). Even in Champagne, many producers do not use this method.

More later….

On the Musings Over a Pint blog there’s a post about the etiquette of drinking beer with friends. This inspired me to think about wine tasting etiquette, and I thought particularly about wine tasting etiquette at wineries. When you visit a winery there are certain ‘rules’ I think it’s important to follow, and they are:

– Don’t say that you don’t like a particular wine, unless you’re out of earshot of a winery employee. If somebody tells me they didn’t like a particular wine from our store, I don’t take offense. For starters I didn’t make the wine, and if you don’t like one there’s a few hundred others to choose from. But a winery only has probably 6 to 12 wines in total, which represents a whole year’s worth of labor. Have you ever spent a whole day baking something only to have somebody tell you they don’t like it? Multiply that by 50 and you have an idea of what I’m talking about. If you really like a wine a lot then tell them so, but otherwise the polite thing to do is keep silent.

– If you’re planning on going with a large group, say 6 or more people, check ahead to see what the winery’s policy is. Some welcome groups, others do not. Checking ahead will save you from being offended when the winery turns your group away.

– Whenever you visit a winery, make sure at least one person from your group buys at least one bottle of wine. It’s not polite to take lots of free samples and then leave. Wineries in California now charge fees for wine tastings because of freeloaders. Don’t encourage Virginia wineries to follow suit.

– If they offer a particular bottle of wine to taste, don’t refuse. For example, if they have a rose wine that they are offering and you generally don’t like roses, taste it anyway. They are giving you wine for free and they want you to experience everything that the winery has to offer, so it’s not polite to pick and choose. Some wineries will let you decide which wines you’d like to taste beforehand, in which case it’s fine to pick. But if it’s offered, take it and remember rule #1.

– Don’t bring bottles of wine you got somewhere else to enjoy on a winery’s property. That’s like bringing food into a restaurant.

– If somebody from the winery wants your genuine opinion on a wine, remember what is a valid criticism and what is not. For example, big and rich red wines are popular now (like Australian shiraz) but most Virginia reds are not in that style. Being lighter is not a flaw. Saying a wine is ‘too sweet’ is not a valid criticism because it has to be qualified. Does the acidity not balance the sweetness? Is there not enough flavor to stand up to the sugar?

These are the ones that come to mind. Remember these rules, and go out there and support the Virginia wine industry. My top recommendations are Linden Vineyards, Gray Ghost Vineyards,
Barboursville Vineyards, Kluge Estate, and Veritas.

We just got in a shipment of the Palo Santo Marron, the newest beer from Dogfish Head brewery. The last time I got this it sold out in about a week, and I had to tell some disappointed people that the brewery just didn’t have enough at the time to satisfy demand. Now they have brewed more, but I can’t promise how long it will be around, so act quickly. Available at both stores.

For those of you who are not familiar with this beer but are now interested, Palo Santo Marron is a strong brown ale aged in Palo Santo, a type of wood from Paraguay. I had the privilege of tasting it the first go round, and found it strong but well balanced. You could cellar this for a couple of years as well.