Introduction
Have you ever wondered which wine pairs best with your favourite guilty pleasure snack? Why are Cheetos and Twinkies great for learning about food and wine pairing? How can everyday foods encourage you to try wines you may have otherwise avoided?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Vanessa Price, the author of Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World and the wine expert for The TODAY Show.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
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Highlights
- What was it like for Vanessa to introduce her non-drinking grandparents to wine in their 80s?
- How did wine culture inspire Vanessa to pursue a career in the industry?
- What did Vanessa discover about publishing after writing her first book?
- What was Vanessa’s journey to starting her column in New York Magazine?
- How did Vanessa choose which food and wine pairings to include in Big Macs and Burgundy?
- What was the idea behind pairing wine with 100 different candies?
- Why did Vanessa choose Sancerre as the best wine to pair with Cheetos?
- How can you best pair licorice, twinkies, s’mores, and cronuts with wine?
- What was it about circus peanuts that inspired someone to try a new type of wine?
Key Takeaways
- I like the creative and fun way that Vanessa has explored the concept of high-low pairings, including which wines go with our favourite guilty pleasure snacks.
- She makes a great point that snacks like Cheetos and Twinkies are great for learning about food and wine pairing because they are simpler in flavour and texture, so it’s easier to understand what will pair well with them.
- I liked her examples of how everyday foods encourage you to try wines you may have otherwise avoided. She talked about circus peanuts helped her discover orange Muscat for the first time.
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About Vanessa Price
Born and raised in Kentucky, Vanessa first caught the wine bug working in a small winery down south. She followed her passion for wine and moved to New York City in 2007, starting as a sommelier on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Vanessa has spent almost two decades in the wine industry as a trained sommelier and is the author of best selling book Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World. Vanessa is a certified Level 4 sommelier, resident sommelier for The TODAY Show and the Wine Director of Wildflower Farms, an Auberge Resort Hotel. She has also taught classes for The Wine & Spirit Education Trust, and has written for and been featured in New York Magazine, Vogue and many others. Mavericks, the new stylish modern steakhouse in Montauk, is Vanessa’s latest venture, which reimages the traditional steakhouse with a menu of local Montauk seafood and produce from James Beard-nominated chef Jeremy Blutstein (previously of Crow’s Nest and Showfish at Gurney’s Star Island), alongside a wide variety of steaks and an unmatched, extensive wine selection from around the world She is the Creative Director and Founder of The Vinum Collective, an all-things wine education platform. Vanessa is a graduate of and instructor for The Wine & Spirit Education Trust® where she also has her certified Level 4 Diploma of Wine and Spirits.
Resources
- Connect with Vanessa Price
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 197: Detecting Wine Aromas with Candy + Go South for Value with Lori Budd
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
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Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Natalie MacLean (00:00):
The circus peanuts, which are those neon orange marshmallows which just look ghastly. But where’d you go with those?
Vanessa Price (00:07):
I did orange Muscat, something that people might not have had very often, but that’s a literal orange and orange. You typically find them in California, the Circus Peanut, it’s round, it’s fluffy, it’s orangey, it’s simple, definitely sweet. Sometimes foods can be a great conduit for introducing us to wine that we might not have ever given a chance previously.
Natalie MacLean (00:28):
Absolutely, always less intimidating.
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please and let’s get started.
Welcome to episode 270. Have you ever wondered which wine pairs best with your favourite guilty pleasure snack? Why are Cheetos and Twinkies great for learning about wine and food pairing? And how can everyday foods encourage you to try wines you may have otherwise avoided? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Vanessa Price, the author of the bestselling book Big Macs and Burgundy Wine Pairings for the Real World. Speaking of books, I wanted to let you know some of our recent winners of our book giveaways, Jennifer Gross in Edmonton and Sarah Lewis from Santa Monica have each won a copy of How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life by Mandy Naglich and Craig Haynes in Ottawa has won a copy of Vignette by Jane Lopes. I still have a copy of Keith Granger’s book Wine Faults and Flaws: A Practical Guide which won the coveted 2022 Prix de l’OIV to give away this terrific hardcover book, retails for $220. All you have to do is email me and let me know that you’d like to win a copy of Keith’s book. I’ll choose someone randomly from those who contact me at [email protected].
(02:40):
Great news, Tantor Media has given me the green light to narrate the audio version of Wine Witch on Fire: Rising From The Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much, rather than hiring an actor. And bonus, I can record it from home rather than having to spend a week in Toronto. Yay. Nothing against, I just like my yoga pants. I’m really looking forward to this journey as I am an avid audiobook listener. That’s how I read. My eyes get too dry and tired reading physical books. I also devour many, many podcasts every week, including those on books, writing, film, pop culture, artificial intelligence, tech, industry issues, health, happiness, food and wine. Although I do tend to conflate those last three. I’m always listening to something when I go for a walk, putting on makeup, even when I’m going to sleep. It’s the only way I can get my mind to press pause for the day. Perhaps I should be listening to more meditation podcasts.
Anyway, I’m keen to learn about the process of recording the book as so much has changed since I did that for my first book Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass, which you can get from audible.com. So I will keep you in the loop if you haven’t yet got your copy of Wine Witch on Fire and would like to support it and this podcast that I do for you on a volunteer basis to ensure it continues, please order it from any online book retailer no matter where you live. It usually arrives within a day or two, and of course the ebook is instant. Every little bit helps spread the message in this book of hope, justice, and resilience. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/270.
If you’ve read the book or are reading it, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’d also love to know which other podcasts you listen to. They don’t have to be wine related though. I’m interested in those, too. I’m always looking to expand my playlist. On with the show.
(04:56):
Vanessa Price is the author of the bestselling book Big Macs and Burgundy Wine Pairings for the Real World. I just love that title and she is the wine expert for the Today Show. She has written for and been featured in New York Magazine, Vogue and many others. Vanessa is a certified level four sommelier, the wine director of Wild Flower Farms an Auberge Resort Hotel, as well as the managing partner of Mavericks, the new stylish modern steakhouse in Montauk on the southern shore of Long Island, and she joins us from there. I believe you’re at the restaurant, Vanessa. Welcome.
Vanessa Price (05:36):
Yeah, it’s funny, I’m actually at my vineyard project on the North Fork at the moment. That’s the vineyard in the background.
Natalie MacLean (05:42):
Oh, you are one busy woman. Wow. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for taking the time. My pleasure. Alright, so now you were born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky by parents, if I understand correctly, who are Southern Baptists. So wine wasn’t on your family table and in fact you introduced your own grandparents to wine when they were in their eighties. So tell us about that. They have some adorable names. Tell us which wine you introduced to them and why.
Vanessa Price (06:08):
Yeah, so my grandparents are Granzie and Hootie, and definitely growing up alcohol was not a part of functions, whether they be communal or family specific or whatever it might be. It was definitely a bit of a taboo. So when I got into the wine industry, I think there was some struggles for my family initially to understand just what that even meant in the abstract What does that mean to work in wine? And I think when my grandparents got to the point that they sort of realized that, nope, this is what she’s doing with her life, this is the career path that she’s headed down, I think they sort of looked at it as well, maybe we should get to know and understand what it is that she does. My grandfather asked me to bring home a bottle of wine for us to share over the holidays, and I remember my dad just about fell out of his chair because he had gone his entire life without his parents drinking.
(06:58):
So to suddenly ask me to bring home a bottle, and I remember just being so enthused by the idea. So just it’s like a tipping point situation. And I remember polling a lot of people and sort of like, what do you think that I should do? What should I bring? And everybody was like, oh, bring an amazing great aged Champagne. People love Napa Cab. It was like all of these, and the more I thought about it, the more I was like, my first experiences with wine were very simple. The very, very beginning wasn’t even necessarily wine, it was Arbor Mist. I used to be an avid collector of Arbor Mist, which is fermented fruit juice basically. But it was pleasurable to me at the time because it was all that I knew. And so I sort of took that philosophy and sort of ran that through the filter of what I thought would be fun to bring. And so I ultimately ended up bringing a Moscato d’Asti because I thought low in alcohol, it’s not going to be something that’s just going to make them woozy and knock ’em out. If you’ve never had alcohol before, it definitely can have an effect very easily. It’s slightly sweet, slightly fizzy, so it’s a little bit like a Coca-Cola or something, but with a little bit of fruitiness and a little bit of alcohol to it. And they absolutely loved it. They finished their glasses and asked for a second one.
Natalie MacLean (08:14):
Wow. Wow. That’s a good conversion story there. And as Moscato d’Asti being from Italy, often only 5% alcohol. So that was a great choice. I agree with you. Yeah, well done. Did they pair it with anything or did they just have another glass?
Vanessa Price (08:29):
It was more of a, because by the time all of the grandkids, my generation had gotten older, everybody had kind of said, that’s been bourbon in my cup or whatever it is, Granzie Hootie, sorry. But we do imbibe from time to time, and so I think they just felt like they’re being part of the family get together.
Natalie MacLean (08:47):
Yeah. Awesome. Alright, so if you didn’t grow up with wine, what was the moment? Or maybe there was a wine that really turned you on to wine?
Vanessa Price (08:56):
So I actually worked at a winery when I was in college in Kentucky. It was made from Kentucky grapes. They’re part of the Ohio River Valley AVA, which is wildly large. It encompasses four states. It really doesn’t mean much in terms of geographical typicity in the wine. It was wine. It was fruit wine somewhere. It is vinifera. Some were hybrids. Lots of Chambourcin, Cheval Blanc, things like that. But it was enough to give me the wine, not because of the wine itself, but because of this culture that seemed to exist around it. It was absolutely fascinating to me how science and history and artistry and culinary, they all seemed to sort of intersect in wine. And I just found that so fascinating, this world that was half technical and half artistry. And it was also just really, it was neat to be at the wine bar and see how people were excited to dress up and to have their tasting flights and it was a special thing that they were sharing. It wasn’t like hammered and having shots of this or loud bars. There was a ceremony to it, which I thought I found really fascinating. And so I think it was just enough for me to go, this is a really cool thing. I don’t think at that time I thought, I’m going to figure out how to make this into a lifetime career, but it was enough for me to go oh let’s see what this is about.
Natalie MacLean (10:13):
Great. And so you worked in a variety of capacities within the wine industry, sales and marketing and so on. But I want to jump forward to the point where you wrote a book before you wrote the book that is Big Macs and Burgundy. So what was that book about? What was its focus? It was a wine book?
Vanessa Price (10:34):
It was, yes. So it’s actually under contract right now for my second book. So I can’t say too much about what it was, but suffice to say it was answering a lot of questions that I had when I got into the wine industry that I felt like all of the wine books answered, but answered in a very circuitous and sort of dense way instead of a more digestible way. And so I felt like I wanted to speak to people that had that same sort of crossing of the Rubicon as I did, where it’s like, okay, I’m in this industry now. I want to make this stuff make sense to me. I understand that this book has the information that I need, but the dots don’t necessarily connect because there’s lack of context. And so that was the concept that the book was built around. So hopefully I’ll be able to talk more about it soon.
Natalie MacLean (11:25):
Sure. Dense, circuitous wine writing. Wow, that’s new, not. [laughter]. So will this book be for consumers or for those in the industry or both?
Vanessa Price (11:36):
I’ve tried really hard with Big Mac and Burgundy, and I think that with any future publications that I do that, that will probably always this sort of tightrope that I walk in, which is if you don’t know a thing about wine, if you don’t know if it’s Merlot or Merlott, there’s something that you can glean from Big Macs and Burgundy. But even if you are in the industry, most likely, there’s so much technical information sort of woven throughout the book that I think that there is still something to be gleaned, even if it’s an industry that you’ve already been in. So I’m hoping to continue that tightrope through any future books.
Natalie MacLean (12:10):
Awesome. So you wrote this book originally, you wanted to publish it, but then you got some good advice from an upstairs neighbor. Tell us who that was and what he told you you needed to do first.
Vanessa Price (12:22):
Yeah. I get very gung-ho about things in my life. I decide I’m going to do something, I go full throttle forward, and I knew nothing about the publishing industry. I just decided that I was going to write a book. And my late baby sister was a journalism major and she was kind enough to help me edit it. And I was like, okay, I wrote this thing, I got somebody to edit it. We’re ready to go. My upstairs neighbour of many, many years, we both bizarrely lived in our building for a decade plus is big in the publishing world. And so I went up and knocked on his door and I was like, okay, I wrote a book. What do I do now? And he was kind of slow down, grasshopper. There’s a couple of steps that you’ve missed along the way, and one of the big ones is you need bylines. And I was like, what’s a byline? No idea. And he was like, you need people to publish pieces that you have written, whether it’s online or in print, to start to give some validity to your voice. People aren’t necessarily going to sign you to publish a book. What is your platform? What is your voice? What is your perspective on your world? You haven’t established that voice yet. And I was like, got it, got it, got it. And so I had to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get bylines.
Natalie MacLean (13:33):
And so one of the first was New York Magazine, which is pretty prestigious. How did you land an article there?
Vanessa Price (13:39):
So he ended up being the co-write on my book actually. He’s an extraordinary, talented human being.
Natalie MacLean (13:45):
He was the former executive editor of New York Observer, and he contributed to Vanity Fair as well.
Vanessa Price (13:50):
Yeah, no big deal.
Natalie MacLean (13:51):
Yeah, no, that’s pretty good coauthor to have.
Vanessa Price (13:54):
Yeah, so he basically coached me through it. He said, what are some things that you feel that you could have a voice about that would be of interest? So I mean, really at this point, he was just helping me. I think he was just entertained. I would bring him bottles of wine and we would talk. And one of the things, I forget how it even came up, but I just mentioned something about fried chicken and Champagne, which is one of my favourite pairings and a well-known standard within the industry of being a fun, high-low pairing. But for him, that was such a novel thing because I think outside of the industry, people don’t necessarily think that somms give ourselves permission to do that. High-low wine pairing has to be fancy. And so he said he found that to be very interesting, and he thought that perhaps others would too.
And so we decided to focus on that, and sort of doing the foods that I knew, and I grew up with Papa John’s and Taco Bell at the dinner table or Mexican pizza casserole that were made from canned tamales and refried beans and that sort of thing. So focusing on those sort of very approachable sort of lowbrow foods, but pairing them with significant wines from significant appellation and sort of using that silly food as an avenue to talk about a wine. And so that was the idea. And I pitched it a couple of places. New York Magazine thought that it was interesting. They published one, it ended up doing gangbusters on their SEO and clickbait and all that good stuff.
Natalie MacLean (15:25):
Wow. What was the pairing?
Vanessa Price (15:26):
The very first one was it was for Halloween, and so I decided to pair the most popular. So if you go to candy.com, it’ll show you the most popular candy by state, like the most ordered and the most popular candy. In New York state since it was New York magazine were Sour Patch Kids. And so I decided to pair a New York wine. I did a semi-dry Riesling from the Finger Lakes with Sour Patch Kids, and that was my first pairing.
Natalie MacLean (15:53):
That’s good. I can see how that would work.
Vanessa Price (15:55):
You got a little sweet and a little tang, right. And that’s exactly what you need to have that vein sort of woven through for both. But it did really well, and they asked for another, and then they asked for another, and before I knew it, it was a column.
Natalie MacLean (16:08):
Oh, wow. And so did it become a weekly or monthly column?
Vanessa Price (16:12):
So it’s funny, there was no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it was weekly, sometimes it was every other week. It was published online. And so it really just kind of flowed with thematically a lot of times the foods, because I wouldn’t choose the foods. New York magazine would choose the foods. I would choose the wine pairing and then use that pairing as a way to guide a reader through the education of that wine and then why it works with this silly food. So the foods were often things that tied into the vein thematically of whatever the magazine was focusing on at that moment.
Natalie MacLean (16:43):
Okay. And did that then segue into a book? Did you think I’ll put this together into a book? Or did people approach you? How did that transition happen?
Vanessa Price (16:53):
Well that’s how I wrote a book to write a book, because I ended up having publishers, significant publishers reaching out to me and going, Hey, this column is amazing. We should turn this into a book. And I was going, well, that’s really funny. I already wrote one. But no one seems to be interested in that one.
Natalie MacLean (17:09):
Adam was right about bylines then.
Vanessa Price (17:11):
Yes, he was.
Natalie MacLean (17:12):
Absolutely. Yeah. So you and Adam worked through kind of which pairings would be in the book. What was your process to figure out, okay, there’s a world of pairings out there, which ones are we going to focus on?
Vanessa Price (17:24):
So a lot of that was driven by. Man, that was a complicated one. It was so complicated because the book isn’t just food and wine pairing, right? It’s also the story of my trajectory of being a kid from a southern Baptist family in Kentucky and moving to the Big Apple and making it in this very sort of prestigious and often perceived as snooty. I don’t necessarily think that it is, but perceived as a snooty industry. And so that story that was sort of woven throughout the book. And so ultimately the way we decided to categorize it was to have the foods follow the trajectory of my story. So starting in Kentucky with southern foods, introducing the people to things like beer cheese, talking about fried chicken, that sort of thing.
Natalie MacLean (18:09):
What is beer cheese? You have to tell us.
Vanessa Price (18:11):
It’s what it sounds like. It’s melted cheese with beer in it.
Natalie MacLean
Oh, okay.
Vanessa Prince
It’s just absolutely delightful. You dip pretzels in it, you dip soft, baked, yummy pretzels.
Natalie MacLean (18:21):
Oh, so it’s like a creamy dip or something?
Vanessa Price
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Natalie MacLean
And what was their wine pairing for that one?
Vanessa Price (18:27):
Oh my gosh, I’ve forgotten what I did with beer cheese. I’ve got the book here. So there’s over 300 food and wine pairings in the book. So the way it sort of ended up being woven was that, so if you look at it, it’s like it’s everything from southern food to gas station food to trying to make it in the city broke food. too. I ended up working for a very prestigious importer and all of the incredible meals that came along with that, like dining at La Bernadine and some of the greatest dining establishments in the world. So the book follows all of those avenues. There’s healthy food chapters and things like that. So it kind of runs the gamut.
Natalie MacLean (19:02):
That’s great. Great way to structure it. So why did you decide to pair wine with 100 different candies?
Vanessa Price (19:09):
So that came out of a conversation, actually. So one of the best ways that Adam and I worked together was that we often disagreed. And so a lot of times the best comes out of those sort of disagreements. And one of the things was that he said that he just didn’t think that dessert wine was that interesting. And I had said, well, not only do I think that dessert wine is that interesting, I think that there’s such a diversity in the world of wine that you could build an entire food org chart based off of it. And that’s sort of what drove ended up becoming the candy listicle, which is, if you look through it, that is a hundred candies paired with a hundred dessert wines and not a single dessert wine is repeated once.
Natalie MacLean (19:54):
Wow. Wow, wow. That’s incredible. I didn’t know there were that many different dessert wines and styles.
Vanessa Price (20:00):
And on top of that, to tell you how seriously I took it, two Masters of Wine signed off on my pairings for all hundred wines.
Natalie MacLean (20:07):
That’s great. You are thorough.
Vanessa Price (20:09):
I got the notes and the why this, but we could this. It’s actually very entertaining to have a Master of Wine talk to you about, but is the saltiness level in the Snickers really sufficient? It was a lot of fun.
Natalie MacLean (20:20):
Get into a technical debate. So let’s get into some of those. Which wine did you pair with Cheetos?
Vanessa Price (20:26):
So Cheetos was probably one of the ones that man, people just really didn’t know what to do with that one. They were just agast that I had paired wine with Cheetos, but it was Sancerre.
Natalie MacLean (20:36):
Oh, okay. So a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire Valley. Why did you go with that? Why is that one working?
Vanessa Price (20:44):
So one of the reasons that sort of silly foods are so great for food and wine pairing analysis is because they are more simplistic, right? When you talk about a composed dish, there’s so many variables. What is the protein? How was it prepared? Was it grilled? Was it smoked? Was it sauted? Was it baked? Was it roasted? What was the accoutrement that went with it? Was it citrus? Was it a cream base? Was it a base? There’s so many different layers to a composed dish. The pairing becomes more complicated when you talk about simple foods like Cheetos, because the food is so primary, it actually becomes an easier way to talk about food and wine pairing because it’s so literal, right? There’s less nuance to it.
But for a Cheeto, what is a Cheeto? A Cheeto is salty. That orange sort of stickiness that we know gets stuck on our fingers and we can’t get off exactly orange. It creates that sort of chewy sensation in our mouth, something that we need to clear our palate from. So it’s really sort of very straightforward in terms of what it’s got, a little bit of crunch to it. So that’s what a Cheeto is. So when you think about Sancerre, you think about a mineral driven white wine that is wildly high in acid. So that minerality, that salinity compliments the saltiness of the Cheeto, and that high acidity works like a squeegee pulling all of that sticky, gunky stuff out of your mouth and just sort of leaving you with all of the pleasurable sensations behind.
Natalie MacLean (22:13):
Sure. So would another high acid white work like a Grüner Veltliner?
Vanessa Price (22:19):
I think so, sure. The reason I specifically chose Sancerre is because of the mineral expression is so specifically saline driven, and the acid is so specifically high. But sure, that’s the thing about food and wine pairing. There’s no absolute right or wrong answer.
Natalie MacLean (22:37):
Absolutely. Oh yes.
Vanessa Price (22:39):
Brazilian sparkling wine, that’s what I paired with.
Natalie MacLean (22:42):
With the beer cheese?
Vanessa Price (22:43):
Yes, with the beer cheese. Because the same way, I didn’t want to repeat a candy throughout the book. I also never repeated a wine, and there’s a word…
Natalie MacLean (22:50):
I thought it might be a bubbly. Yeah, no, that’s brilliant.
Vanessa Price (22:52):
Yeah, it was a bubbly. And I went with Brazil because I really wanted to be inclusive of discoveries that could be found all around the world.
Natalie MacLean (23:00):
Alright, well then how about licorice?
Vanessa Price (23:03):
Ooh, licorice is a fun one. Licorice. But that’s where it’s like are you talking about red licorice or you talking about black licorice?
Natalie MacLean (23:08):
You choose.
Vanessa Price (23:10):
When you talk about black licorice, you need something that sort of matches that same sort of bitter quality. So it’s quite literally licorice. So if you have something that has that actual kena in it. What kena root is what produces that licorella sort of licorice impression? Think about star… anise.
Natalie MacLean (23:30):
Anise
Vanessa Price (23:31):
Exactly. So kena is the root. Kena root is what is actually added to Barolo Quinto, which is a style of dessert wine coming from Piedmont in northern Italy where the famous Barolo is produced. Barolo Pintos are Barolos that have had a proprietary family recipe plus kena root added to the barrels and allowed to macerate. And perhaps there is a fortification and a slight dose of sugar to give it that sweetness, but it’s very bitter sweet wine with that licorice impression.
Natalie MacLean (24:02):
Oh, that’d be brilliant. I want to try that for sure. How about Twinkies?
Vanessa Price (24:07):
So Twinkies. Twinkies I did with Sauterne. So that one was also a lot of fun because there’s a famous restaurant in Midtown called The Grill, which is part of the Major Good Group, and they very famously have three centuries of Chateau Y’quem on their list. And I mentioned, this is actually one of the pairings that was from New York Magazine that we carried over to the book, and I had mentioned they might let you BYOT if you got a bottle of their Y’quem. And then I think your….
Natalie MacLean (24:33):
Bring Your Own Twinkies…
Vanessa Price (24:35):
They ended up having a couple people asked to do it. They were like, we’re going to have a bottle of Y’quem. Can we bring a Twinkie? And I think they plated them for it and gave them a fork and a knife. So there’s a lot of fun in that.
Natalie MacLean (24:46):
Oh my God, great stories. S’mores.
Vanessa Price (24:49):
S’mores. What did I do with s’mores? Oh, I did a Recioto della Valpolicella. So that was one that was a little bit more confounding for me. It’s a bizarre mix of very sweet, subtle bitterness of the chocolate. The saccharin sort of smoked character of the marshmallow, the drying sweet sensation of the graham cracker. There was a lot going on and it seemed like Ports didn’t do it. Madeiras didn’t do it. Ice wines didn’t do it. I was having a really hard time finding one that worked and ended up finding. So Recioto della Valpolicella is the dessert wine coming from the Veneto, which is where Amarone is made. So it’s basically made in the same style as Amarone, but the grapes are actually dehydrated to a greater level, and when the fermentation happens, there’s actual sugar left. So again, there’s a bitterness and a sweet component to it. So red sweet wines are less common than white sweet wines, but they have a lot of great application.
Natalie MacLean (25:50):
Okay. Which is that magical combination of a donut and a crueler. Is it?
Vanessa Price (25:56):
What did I pair it with? Cronuts? I’m going to have to look and see.
Natalie MacLean (26:01):
Was that a New York invention?
Vanessa Price (26:03):
Yes. Oh, it’s something that kind of people line up out the door. So I did a section that was on all the Instagramable foods, because essentially cronut is, you put that on the gram if you got in line and you waited in that line and you were able to get one of those because that is really what it was. It was like a line out the door situation. But then even once you got in that line, you weren’t guaranteed to actually get one. So I did an Anderson Valley sparkling wine, so something that had that sparkling character to sort of go against that yeasty sort of quality. So if you have that yeast in your wine, and then you have that yeast in your half croissant, half donut, but something that has a little bit more riper fruitier character, which New World sparkling wines tend to give you more than Old World sparkling wines, and especially something from California, it’s just going to have a little bit more power behind it. And the Anderson Valley makes some amazing sparkling wines that are much less known than some of their Carneros or Sonoma or Santa Barbara counterparts.
Natalie MacLean (27:09):
Wow. Okay. And the circus peanuts, which are those neon orange marshmallows which just look ghastly. But where’d you go with those?
Vanessa Price (27:17):
What did I do with those? You’re putting me on the spot here [laughter]. Let me find my listicle.
Natalie MacLean (27:23):
Something orangey maybe in wines.
Vanessa Price (27:26):
What did I do about those circus peanuts? The good thing about it is it’s all in…
Natalie MacLean (27:32):
The book, which people could buy.
Vanessa Price (27:33):
It’s all in the book and oh, that’s right. I did orange Muscat.
Natalie MacLean (27:36):
Okay. An orange wine.
Vanessa Price (27:37):
Something that people might not have had very often, but that’s a literal orange and orange. You typically find them in California, but it’s a literal interpretation in a wine form of a circus peanut. It’s round, it’s fluffy, it’s orangey, it’s simple. Definitely sweet. Just like a circus peanut. It’s funny, I remember now Somm TV tested a lot of the pairings that were in the listicle, and that was one of them. And they remember being fascinated because they thought it was the first application they’d ever heard of where they were actually interested in drinking an orange Muscat. So sometimes foods can be a great conduit for introducing us to wine that we might not have ever given a chance previously.
Natalie MacLean (28:17):
Absolutely. Always less intimidating.
(28:24):
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Vanessa. Here are my takeaways. Number one, I like the fun and creative way that Vanessa has explored the concept of high low pairings, including which wines go with our favourite guilty pleasure snacks. Number two, she makes a great point that snacks like Cheetos and Twinkies are great for learning about wine and food pairing because they are simpler in flavour and texture, so it’s easier to understand what will pair well with them. And number three, I liked her examples of how everyday foods encourage you to try wines you may have otherwise avoided. She talked about circus peanuts, how they helped her discover orange Muscat for the first time. In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Vanessa, links to her website and books, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online no matter where you live.
You’ll also find a link to take my free online food and wine pairing class called The Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. That’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/270. Email me if you have a sip, tip, question or if you’ve read my book or are in the process of reading it at [email protected].
If you have suggestions on how to improve this podcast or guests I should interview, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you. If you missed episode 197, go back and take a listen. I chat with podcaster Lori Budd about how to detect wine aromas by tasting candy as well as heading south to find great value wines. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
(30:16):
I’m a wine cheap skate at heart. There’s a thrill of the hunt when you can find a wine that tastes twice as much as it costs. Like if you go to a discount warehouse outlet store and you find a Versace jacket, that’s 10% of its original cost. And one of my biggest tips that came out of that book was go south. So a lot of the badge or name regions in many countries are expensive. So if you think Tuscany and Piedmont, if you go south you’re going to get deals from Sicily. Even in California, Napa and Sonoma, go south to Paso Robles or Santa Cruz and you’re going to find much more affordable wines.
(31:01):
You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Vanessa. If you like this episode or learn something from it, please email or tell one friend about it this week. Especially someone who’d be interested in the wines, tips, and stories we shared. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a wine that pairs perfectly with circus peanuts or Cheetos, likely that would be an orange Muscat. Three for three with orange all round. Cheers.
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
