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
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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