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SF Event: Wine vs. Wine vs. Not-Wine

 

In the latest of these creative pairing contests at San Francisco's Fifth Floor restaurant, the house Master Sommelier Emily Wines with compete to pair wine with each course of a five-course meal against two other sommeliers.

Emily Wines will pair Old World wines.
Consultant Master Sommelier Brian Cronin will pair New World wines.
Sommelier Paul Einbaum (formerly of Coi) will pair with Anything But wine.

Diners get to try all three pairings with all five courses, in a setting that is both educational and fun. This event is on February 18th. More info will eventually be posted here and the event is a bargain at $125.

Perhaps Emily Wines is competing against other sommeliers this time because after trouncing the competition at the first two pairing battles, she lost the third to Arne Johnson of the Marin Brewing Company, who paired each course with beer. Dethroned!!

Info on the previous pairing showdowns is here:

• - First Battle and results
• - Second Battle
• - Third Battle

Cheesy or Sexy?

Behold the Wisconsin Cheese Cupid.

This site helps pair (Wisconsin) cheese with red and white wines, beer, and spirits including scotch and brandy. It's cute and all, but the best thing about the site is that each cheese and beverage is introduced in a sexy voice.

"Brandy. Coincidentally, Brandy is also my middle name."

"Scotch. Can I persuade you with a glass of scotch my friend?"

She even makes this sentence sound like she's narrating a romance-by-phone commercial:
"Butterkäse always plays nice with a ham sandwich."

I kind of love it.

SF Event: Beer vs. Wine vs. Sake- and another Giveaway

Like the Godzilla of pairing, Emily Wines has twice squashed her competition in the Fifth Floor Restaurant's Food and Drink Pairing Deathmatch (also known as the Three on Five event). These competitions pit a sommelier (Wines) against a beer professional and usually a mixologist to see who can pair his or her beverage of choice better with each of the five courses served at dinner.

Twice Emily Wines has entered the ThunderDome (private dining room) and twice emerged as the sole victor, leaving only tearful beer and cocktail geeks (and satisfied diners) in her wake.  Will she be over-confident, like ThunderDome's seemingly-unbeatable Master Blaster? I think we all know how that turned out. (Master Blaster didn't win.)

For the next battle, scheduled January 20th, Wines will take on two new competitors. Representing beer will be Arne Johnson, head brewer for the Marin Brewing Company. He may have been brewing since he was 13 years old, but can he pair his brew with food? We shall see.

Instead of a mixologist, in this battle the third contestant will be Beau Timken, owner of the True Sake store, author of Sake: A Modern Guide, sake menu consultant, educator, and a guy who makes a point of pairing sake with every type of cuisine imaginable. He will, of course, be pairing sake.

The battle takes place on January 20th at the Fifth Floor Restaurant in San Francisco, beginning at 7:30PM. Each contestant pairs his or her beverage with each of the five courses of the meal, meaning diners get 15 drinks along with their food. That's a bargain at $125 per person, and the people I've spoken with who've attended these events in the past have been very happy with the whole experience. More information is here, and make sure to reserve for the "Three on Five" event. 

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*** I'll also be giving away a pair of tickets to this event to a randomly-chosen person who signs up to the Alcademics A-Plus email list. If you're not already on the list, sign up now as I'll be choosing the winner later this week.

Vodka for dinner

Last night I went to the Square One Vodka and summer barbecue pairing dinner at Orson in San Francisco. I've been to many cocktail pairing dinners before, but this one worked especially well. Why? Because it's vodka. Unlike stronger flavored booze like tequila or scotch, vodka is more adaptable to the ingredients surrounding it- both in drinks and pairing it with food.

We had a drunken watermelon ball (served on a spoon) to pair with smokey oysters, a crisp sparkling wine and vodka drink to pair with pork belly over a watermelon and fruit salad, a simple and light peach shandy to go with some BBQ meats, and an orange-infused vodka and espresso drink with dessert. (Or, in my case, a vegetarian version of those dishes.) Bar manager Jackie Patterson was able to adapt sour to sweet, soothing to spicy, sweet to smoky, and then make a bitter drink for dessert.

I forgot to take pictures, so my illustration of the meal is below. As you can see, Jackie (exhibiting shakerface) mixes up a drink, and then I open my mouth to drink it. That is pretty much what happened.