My last Blogger post, but not my last SAZ in the Cellar post!

After 18 months of using Blogger, I have decided to switch over to Wordpress.  This decision was based primarily on the ability to easily build out a more proper website.  It will continue to be used for blogging, but also used to start describing and promoting my upcoming wine book.  I can also easily create additional web pages to provide links to anything and everything wine-like.  The blog is stilled called SAZ in the Cellar, but just has a new URL.

All Blogger posts have been imported into Wordpress and still available!  However, the internal links to other previous posts still point to Blogger, so I will keep Blogger reference-able until all links are changed.

I am very excited about both my upcoming book and the capabilities provided within Wordpress.  Using Wordpress should allow me to significantly grow the usefulness of SAZ in the Cellar.  For regular updates, please also like my Facebook SAZ in the Cellar page.  And the book, Wine Sense(s) should be available around the end of 2013 or very early 2014.

I am integrating my wine and writing brand into SAZ in the Cellar to make it easy for you to follow and continue to partake in the wonderful world of wine with me!

Thanks to all of you for your tremendous support and to Google Blogger for making it possible.  We had over 33,000 page views since launching about 18 months ago.  But it is time to expand and do many new things.  And Wordpress provides a brand new vintage for doing that!


Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Wordpress website:  http://sazinthecellar.com/
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

What Wine with Truffle?

We have been on a bit of a truffle kick the last few weeks, even posting a vlog on making scrambled eggs with truffle.  And last night, my loved one, DAZ in the Kitchen, made a great pasta dish with chicken, cream, and a mushroom and truffle paste.  It was delicious and will be posted in Daz in the Kitchen soon.

Truffles

Both mushroom and truffle have strong umami mouth taste and feel.  Jeannie Choo Lee, Master of Wine (MW), and expert in Asian haute cuisine (and everyday Asian food fare!) in her book Asian Palate: Savoring Asian Cuisine and Wine, explains umami as follows:

"Umami is a Japanese term that is widely acknowledged to be the fifth taste, the others being salty, sour, bitter and sweet.  It was identified by Professor Kikunae Ikeda at Tokyo Imperial University over 100 years ago. as amino acid glutamate (aka glutamic acid) and later confirmed by research as a type of amino acid that is detectable by tongue receptors.  Rather than having its own recognizable flavor, umami is subtle and expands, creates depth and rounds out other flavors.  It occurs naturally in foods such as seaweed, mushrooms, soy sauce and aged cheese."

She also recommends a full body, aged white wine such as Chardonnay or Semillon to compliment and enhance umami flavors.  We had a 2006 Penfolds Yatarnna in the fridge, pulled it out, matched it up against the pasta and it was a perfect combination!  I love a big, aged Chardonnay with cream sauce and mushrooms and the heightened and enhanced flavors derived from the truffle only added to the flavor (to the point of satiation!).  The meal was magic.

We have used truffle to enhance scrambled eggs as shown in the video and also in quiche.  (If using 100% real truffle, you only need a very small amount which is good because it is expensive!)  With the eggs and possibly some cheese in an omelet or quiche, I would recommend an aged Semillon instead of a Chardonnay.

If you have not tried real truffle, you should!  If you cannot bring yourself to pay the price for real truffle, you can use a truffle flavored oil instead, but there is a drop-off in taste.  With half a teaspoon of truffle added to our scrambled eggs, the finish on the truffle lasted hours on our palate.  It is an amazing ingredient to add to many meals.  And if you are looking for a wine to go with truffle, a big, aged white Chardonnay or Semillon is the way to go.


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Blogging or Booking?

Many people have asked why I have not been releasing as many blog posts in the last few months.  I used to post about 10 - 15 per month, but have only posted twice now in the last month.  I apologize for that and need to get more diligent.  But there is good cause as I have been very focused on getting my first wine book published.  This has been a far larger effort than my previous book Still Stupid at Sixty which I wrote under the pseudonym, Blake Stevens.  It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the electronic publishing industry.  But that was a tale that I needed to write, not a book that I hope influences a much larger audience.

I have written about 300 pages so far and expect the wine book will end up between 350 - 375 pages.  I am putting a heavy-duty effort into finalizing my research and restructuring the book to make it more readable and accessible.  I am really excited about the book and hope it reaches a wide audience that will enjoy and benefit from it.  My last book was only published in electronic format and limited to Kindle mobi format (which has about 90% of sales for authors electronically).  My wine book will be published both electronically (in a number of different formats) and in printed form and will have a number of photographs.  It will also have video links using QR Codes.  The photography and video components adds a great deal of work to the effort, but is well worth it.

My last book was a personal tale so I did not need to do any research or citation of references.  My wine book will have a substantial bibliography and set of footnotes and endnotes.  This is another dimension of why the wine book requires much more effort than my first book did.

Note taking in Evernote

I had been writing the book in Word, but have now converted the Work In Process (WIP) to Scrivener which is an authoring management system.  I am also using Evernote for collecting research and clipping notes.  Both are brilliant applications which have really increased my productivity.  I review my sources, enter comments into Evernote on my iPad (see picture), then cut and paste into the correct section in Scrivener.  This has really helped me to improve the organization and structure of the book.  It has also provided me a vehicle to do much more electronically instead of working with paper to-do lists and a multitude of different files, notebooks, Post-It tabs, margin writing, etc. Additionally, I am learning HTML and CSS to be able to better understand and control the final output of the books even though I will have a professional designer work with me to accomplish that.

However, all of the book writing and coming up to speed with new applications (great as they are!) on top of working a full-time job has limited my desire and ability to blog, and for that I apologize.  I am flattered that a number of people have been querying my whereabouts and look forward to my posts!  And I want to let you know that I will be blogging much more over the next month again.  I will do limited writing on my wine book, but much reading and research and restructuring of the book before I get into doing a significant rewrite in about four to six weeks time.  This will leave more energy over the next month for blogging.  Plus I will extract a number of the basic concepts from the book and use those to create blog posts and to start to introduce you to the book.

Thank you so much for your support!  I really appreciate it and hope you will become as interested in my wine book as you are my wine blog.  I will release some 'teasers' along the way as each section of the book is further developed.

We had a tremendous time in the Hunter Valley, meeting with some wine makers and cellar door friends, and also meeting some new great chefs around the region.  It was so wonderful to have two solid weeks of vacation to do a major restructuring of the wine book, but my blogging has suffered due to my dedication and focus to the book.  I will try to keep both better balanced while I am finishing off the book.  I promise each of my three blogs will receive more attention.

Thanks again for your support and interest, and keep drinking well!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Magnificent Meal with McLeish Wines

We are spending two weeks in the Hunter Valley and really enjoying it.  We have taken the opportunity to cook every meal so far and have plans to cook most of our meals while here.  However, we are excited to participate in two McLeish Estate wine tastings.  The first one was this evening at Two Naughty Chooks Restaurant and Wine Bar at 130 John Street, Singleton, NSW and the other will be tomorrow evening at Paymasters Cafe in Newcastle.  Both are hosted by McLeish Estate wines.

Brook and Wayne Dermody are the husband and wife team and co-chefs at Two Naughty Chooks Restaurant and Wine Bar.  The food truly caught us by surprise - it was magnificent!  And working together with Jessica McLeish of McLeish Wines, we had a perfect pairing of food and wine.  We also bought some real truffles and other truffle-related products.  (Tomorrow morning for breakfast we will be having scrambled eggs with truffles - yum!)

Bob and Maryanne McLeish have been working the vineyard since 1985, and all grapes are sourced from their own vineyards.  They have a premium parcel of land between Broke Road and De Beyers Road and the quality of their grapes shows in the quality of their wines.  Their daughter, Jessica, is part of the wine making team along with Andrew Thomas, one of Australia's best known winemakers.  The McLeish family and Andrew Thomas make a formidable team and I am certainly interested in trying more of their wines year-in and year-out.

We started the evening drinking a Sparkling Chardonnay and a Sparkling Shiraz with an assortment of great canapes.  Then we sat down for a four-course degustation with perfectly matching wines.  The first course was a Jerusalem artichoke soup with scallop, bacon, Hazelnuts and crispy artichoke.  We drank a 2013 McLeish Estate Semillon (bottled only four weeks prior) and the 2009 McLeish Estate Semillon.  Both wines went extremely well with the soup.  The 2013 Semillon was fresh and very alive on the palate, with citrus and pineapple flavors, while the 2009 Semillon possessed a smoother mouth feel and was more integrated and balanced due to its maturity.

Jessica describing the Semillons

We then had the Confit chicken with mushroom and truffle.  Among so many other great foods during the evening, it is impossible to pick out a standout dish, but if one had to chose, this would be it.  And the matching wine was the 2009 McLeish Estate Reserve Chardonnay.  This was also the stand-out wine of the evening and we are swinging by McLeish Estate in the next several days to get a dozen or so bottles.  The 2009 McLeish Estate Reserve Chardonnay drank like a Montrachet.  It had a mineral, wet stone taste representative of Chassagne Montrachet and lemon flavors.  It also still had a good amount of acid and should cellar and improve with age over the next decade or so.

The main course was beef cheeks with celeriac, broad beans, pickled cabbage and Enoki mushrooms with a matching 2010 McLeish Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.  The bouquet was amazing. This wine was drinkable now, with big fruity, jammy flavors, tasting of blackberries.  It was alive on the palate.  This drink was surprisingly good for a Hunter Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

We also had the 2010 McLeish Estate Shiraz and the 2009 McLeish Estate Jessica Botytis Semillon with an assortment of desserts.    The Shiraz was big and both fruity and spicy, typical of a Hunter Valley Shiraz.  It possessed boysenberry and plum flavors.

While both red wines were very drinkable today, the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Shiraz had decent tannins and I am certain each wine will improve significantly over time.  You should buy some now to sit down in the cellar for a few years!  And the 2009 Jessica was luscious, with a creamy, yet refined mouth feel.  It had both melon and honey flavors and was a bit sweet, but not too sweet.

The evening overall was magical with a great crowd, great chefs, food and service and of course, great wines.  Jessica McLeish is typical of someone in the Australian wine industry in that she is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about her wine, yet is one of the friendliest people around and willing to share her knowledge with anyone else who is interested (like me!).

And to think we get to repeat the experience (with a different line-up of McLeish Estate wines) tomorrow again at Paymasters Cafe.  Looking forward to it!  Then back to cooking on our own!


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Pinterest Boards: Wine Humor, Wine Labels, Wine Paraphernalia
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

Gustatory Travel Experiences!

I am about 90% complete in writing the initial draft of my wine book entitled Wine Sense(s), and am excited to start sharing some extracts with you.  Today I am featuring how to indulge in culinary excursions to further your wine education.  One reason for featuring this topic is that it provides a fun way to learn more about food and wine.  Another is that the proprietor, On the Road Culinary Adventures, is offering an upcoming 10-day Mediterranean culinary cruise which looks fantastic, so if you are looking to get away for a few weeks this September, you should check this out. 

This section is extracted from Part 4: Where to Next?, Chapter 19:  Further Wine Education, under the section Guided Gustatory Tours.  (Please note that this is draft material and may contain grammatical and other errors.)

Guided Gustatory Tours

Continued reading and research using the resources described above provides an ongoing improvement in our cognitive wine knowledge which is critical to improving wine drinking enjoyment and appreciation.  But that on its own is not pleasurable unless you actually do some wine drinking along the way!

Earlier in the book, we discussed a number of different methods to gain wine drinking experience as part of our everyday existence.  But there exist some other avenues for concentrated and intensive wine education which comprises eating and drinking great wines in great locations.  More and more food and wine tours are being organized to provide ‘extreme’ gustatory experiences embodied as vacations.  These can be in duration from several days to several weeks or longer.  They usually involve traveling to a place relevant to the food and wine that will be discussed and consumed.  Many occur in exotic places such as Tuscany or Provence or take place on cruise ships featuring ‘intensive’ cooking or wine tasting courses that are great fun and great education.

While you can select your own destinations and visit different wineries and partake in different tasting experiences, having an expert aware of the region, its food and wine styles, and with access to the best venues and instructors can be a real help; both in terms of what you learn and how enjoyable it is.  You can query online or visit a travel agent find out more about these types of wine educational tours and vacations to start to search for and plan available options.

I am not going to provide links or names as I am more familiar with the growth of this concept for ‘extreme gustatory vacations’ than I am knowledgeable with the increasing number of providers in this space.  You can easily find out more by looking online or talking with a travel agent.  However, I will use one provider I am familiar with and can recommend to illustrate the services and options available.  On theRoad Culinary Adventures (www.ontheroadculinaryadventures.com/) combines a love of food and wine with a love of travel to provide culinary travel adventures.  These include several-day events hosted in the US and longer overseas trips, including cruises. 

On the Road Culinary Adventures combine a relaxing vacation experience which focuses on teaching you more about food and wine through providing a tremendous culinary experience complimented by increasing your cognitive knowledge through lectures, instruction by guest chefs, and a hands-on teaching experience where you are preparing the food and the meals under the tutelage of culinary experts.  I know the owners from having worked together with them in the corporate world, and know they have exquisite taste and knowledge when it comes to food and wine and a passion to share that with others.

Gustatory vacations can provide intense and in-depth experiences in a relaxing environment.  You should come back from this type of experience with deeper knowledge and increased abilities to recreate similar events at home and share with friends.  A gustatory vacation also increases your visibility of what is possible and heightens your expectations of how to be involved and even host similar events in the future.

Visit the fish market with the Executive Chef of the Quest in Kusadasi, Turkey followed by a cooking demo with lunch

Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
Pinterest Boards: Wine Humor, Wine Labels, Wine Paraphernalia
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

The jury is in on Shiraz with pork!

Many of you are aware of my recent experiment of having an elegant Shiraz with a pork fillet, mash, gravy and vegetables the other evening.  The meal on its own was magnificent and so was the wine.  The combination of the two together was adequate, but not perfect.  The 15 year-old Shiraz was made in a less heavy style than many other Shiraz' and had soften quite a bit with time.  Yet, it was still too powerful and overwhelming for the pork.  I love to co-mingle perfectly matched food and wine, but the Shiraz over-powered the food in this case.  I needed to take several minutes of palate resting between bites of food and sips of wine to really enjoy both on their own.

So in the case of a good pork fillet in the future, it will be back to Pinot Noir for the most part.  However, I was reminded by RAP (a blog viewer and commenter), that another beautifully styled wine to match up with pork is a GSM blend.  GSM is common wine terminology for Grenache, Shiraz, and Mouvredre (often called Mataro also).  This blend works beautifully with pork, and I have even written about this as a possibility previously.  This was a superb suggestion RAP!  The GSM blend is softer and more of an old world style that works well with a pork fillet.  There is a lot going on in this blend and it is quite complex in terms of the primary and secondary flavors coming through.  Yet, it does not overpower pork.

Another mate suggested that if a meal does not match well with the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz, well then just throw out the meal!  This may be a bit extreme, but he does have something in the Vat 9 being a meal on its own!

After the meal, I did indulge in a couple of pieces of Lindt Chili Chocolate which does match perfectly with Shiraz.  The chili infusion in the chocolate provides some power to match the power of a good Shiraz.  So it was a very good evening of food eating and wine drinking, but in the future, it will be even better by drinking a Pinot Noir or GSM when serving pork.


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store

1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 Shiraz - will it work with pork?!

I am experimenting this evening by opening a Shiraz to go with pork fillet, mash, vegetables and gravy.  Usually I would play it safe and go with a good Pinot Noir for this meal.  It is difficult to find a much better food / wine matching combination than a Pinot Noir with pork!

But I really wanted to try another bottle of the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 as it is a superb wine and at 15 years of age, I needed to check it out to make sure (that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!) it will cellar for a while yet as I have about a ten bottles left.  I don't want to wait too long, but I do want to pace drinking this wine over the next several years or longer if I can.  I would hate to wait too long and have it go off, as it is drinking very well now, but I am hoping to make it last as long as I can.

I have a great deal of respect for James Halliday and subscribe to his wine service.  But he missed the mark when evaluating this wine as he gave it an 86/100 and said to drink it by 2008.  This wine is still very big, yet elegant, with lively fruit, tasting of blackberry with light overtones of spice and leather.  It is well integrated, and nicely balanced with strong tannins.  The finish is moderate to long, and you can feel the accumulated tannins on the inside of your cheeks for a long time.  This is an excellent wine, regardless of how Halliday and others scored it.

I had this wine as one of my three red wines at my 58th birthday party over two years ago.  This was the first red, followed by the 2001 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz and the 1981 Penfolds Grange.  All three red wines were spectacular, but the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 got the consensus vote for the best red wine of the evening.  It could be that it was the sequencing and by the time we drank the 1981 Penfolds Grange, we were over-satiated.  Or it could be that the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 is just that good!

So why is having a Shiraz a risk with pork?  It is because a Hunter Valley (and many other) Shiraz' are heavier and spicier than most Pinot Noirs and could overwhelm the pork and side dishes.  But the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 is an elegant, more refined Shiraz than many others.  I know it will be fine with the pork dinner and wanted to see if it works to provide some variety from always using a Pinot Noir with pork.  If not, I will go back to Pinot Noir!  But if you don't try, you will never know!

I have also had this wine with spaghetti and it worked very well.  My wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, makes a very fine and spicy spaghetti and the 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9 matched up extremely well with it.  This is a versatile Shiraz!  Andrew Thomas made this wine while still at Tyrrell's and I remember talking to Andrew about it several years ago and the fond memories he had for this particular vintage.

On its own, this is a great wine (I know as I am on my second glass while writing this) and it should be fine with the meal.  I will let you know in a follow-up blog post how it works with the pork.  And once I finish off the last of my 1998 Tyrrell's Vat 9, I will move onto the 2007 Tyrrells' Vat 9.  In fact, I will probably try my first bottle this weekend or next to see how it goes.  Halliday rated the 2007 Vat 9 at 95/100 and drinkable until 2025.  Campbell Mattinson rated it 96/100 and as one of the best reds released in 2010/11. This must be an amazing wine!  But for now, I am drinking the 1998 and greatly enjoying it. 


Steve Shipley
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My other blog (on business, tech, world issues):  Steve Shouts Out!
My Blake Stevens blog: From Blake's Bookshelf 
Still Stupid at Sixty in Amazon Kindle Store