I’ve talked about the red hot poker here and here, but haven’t posted a video until now. Click below to see how you can “poke” your beverages at home. Please note the use of orange bitters.
Category Archives: Videos
The perfect gin and tonic
I bet Santa likes clarified lime juice.
Here’s Dave Arnold doing his thing. This is part of a really cool series called 12 Second Cocktails, courtesy of HungryNation.
Decanting Champagne?
Yesterday I attended a class at the Astor Center that explored decanting Champagne with Régis Camus, winemaker for Champagnes Piper Heidsieck and Charles Heidsieck, Maximilian Riedel, the CEO for Riedel Crystal North America (he’s the 11th generation of the family) and Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan, MW.
Before we got to the decanting, we experimented with different glasses, trying the house Brut and Rosé both in Champagne flutes and white wine glasses.
The Champagne in the white wine glass won every time. It was rounder, fuller, smoother and more aromatic. The glass shape impacts where the wine hits your mouth – with the flute, it hits at the tip of the tongue and with the white wine glass, it hits just behind the tip of the tongue, causing the wine to flow more evenly over your palate, allowing you to get more from it. It’s also quite a bit easier to fit your nose inside a wine glass than a Champagne flute and smelling is often the best part. The next time I serve Champagne at my house, my guests will be in for a surprise.
Here’s a video detailing the decanting of the 1995 Blanc des Millénaires.
More vineyard adventures
While the Ürziger Würzgarten vineyard was probably my favorite, I wanted to share two more with you.
The winemaker from Emrich Schönleber walking us through the Goldtröpfchen vineyard
Whenever we were let out into the vineyards, we were like kids at recess. Here’s a short video of my fellow wine nerds traipsing through the Goldtröpfchen vineyard. I was hoping to hit the America’s Funniest Home Video jackpot, but no dice.
This was the next stop:
Still in the Mosel, on to the Erdener Treppchen vineyard
you can see me making my way up the stairs at the bottom left - helps give some scale to the shot
I made a quick video of this vineyard because I was impressed by the “soil” (aka big slabs of slate). I did turn the camera at one point, but it still worth checking out.
Bright young stars
This week we visited with Prinz Salm. Here’s a quick video showing the estate:
The estate has been around since 1200, but the average age of the current team in charge is 25! We tasted and toured with Felix, who’s 27 and the current wine maker (he started 2 years ago). He’s the 32nd generation, but the first one to focus only on wine making – historically, the family has also been involved in politics, construction and finance.
Felix told us a story about when his grandparents were living near Cologne prior to WWII. When his grandmother received word the Americans were coming, she acted quickly to preserve the family’s wine cellar. She took all the bottles from the cellar, tied rocks to them and tossed them into the nearby lake. The wines were protected and the family did get them back, but there was one serious shortcoming to her idea – the day after she sunk the bottles, all of their labels floated to the surface of the lake.
After we toured the estate, Felix took us to some of his family’s vineyards. Here’s a video where’s discussing one of his current projects, replanting Riesling vines.
(This video has useful information, but it appears as though it was shot by a child. I didn’t realize you can’t get a “portrait” shot in video mode – only “landscape”. I’ll get the hang of it)
Beneath the market
I hope the sound works in this video. I’m traveling with a computer that doesn’t like to play audio, so I’m hoping for the best.
This medieval, 500 year-old cave that lies below the market in Westhofen has belonged to Weingut K.F. Groebe since 1763. All of Fritz’s wines are treated in oak – no stainless steel (if the sound is working in the video you’ll learn the barrels are 20-100 years old, so they don’t impart flavor – it’s more about texture and tradition).
I asked if the cellar required any maintenance and the answer was “not really”. It maintains a year-round temperature of right around 14 degrees Celsius and just the humidity level that the wines seem to like. From time to time, they may have to clean a little fungus from the outside of the barrels just to make sure it doesn’t end up in the wine.
Turns out this fungus (the black stuff you can see on the ceiling if you’re paying attention) is “good fungus” and survives on humidity and alcohol alone – doesn’t sound like such a bad existence.
The Colbert Bump
What cocktail would you serve Stephen Colbert?
I asked a few friends this question and got some funny responses. One suggested a French cocktail due to Colbert’s tendency to pronounce things with a French accent. Another submission was a cocktail ending in a soft “t”. A third idea was a drink with a disconnect between what it looks like (or its ingredients) and what it tastes like, to reflect the satirical nature of his program. Another clever proposal was a hyper patriotic cocktail – bourbon (which by law must be made in the U.S.) with blue curaçao, grenadine and coconut milk – stars and bars! An American beer-based cocktail could fall into this category, too.
On a recent visit to Colbert’s show, David Wondrich, a cocktail historian, made him a “Colbert Bump”. He based it on the “Cherry Bounce”, one of our country’s oldest cocktails. I’ve come across several versions, but most involve cherries, whiskey, sugar and time (probably why Mr. Wondrich went right for the cherry brandy).
Check out the amusing exchange below.
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Thirsty heavy metal hitmakers
I came across something that shows even bad boys with big hair enjoy wine from time to time. “Me and My Wine” was on Def Leppard’s second album, High N’ Dry, which was released in the U.S. in 1984. Seems like an oversight that this song never made it on either of their best-of collections. I can’t decide which is my favorite part of the video – Joe Elliot simultaneously singing and brushing his teeth or Rick Savage playing his bass in the bathtub – but, here’s my favorite snippet of lyrics:
Oh me and the boys have been drinking
Feeling like this is the wrong time for thinking
All I can say is I’m doing fine with just me and my wine
Now listen
My hair’s a real mess, I feel and look like a joke
And there’s a hole in my jeans, I just ran right out of smokes
You know I’d like to get to know you
But I ain’t got the time
I’m finding it harder and harder
To make this damn thing rhyme
Filed under Alcohol in Music, Videos
A shot at the bar?
A lot of things pair well with drinking – watching sports, eating peanuts/pizza/burgers/pretty much anything, dancing – but handguns? Really?
Two states, Tennessee and Arizona, have recently passed legislation making it ok to carry a concealed weapon into a bar. The new laws in both states stipulate that armed bar patrons must refrain from drinking. If the weapons are concealed, how will the bartender know who to serve and who not to?
The Colbert Report has produced a spot-on assessment of this situation by profiling one of Tennessee’s political leaders, Doug Jackson. Check it out:
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Filed under Alcohol in the News, Videos
Thirsty strikes again on corksavvy.com
Here’s a 4 minute clip on food and wine pairing. Very attractive freeze frame don’t you think?
A Thirsty Spirit 