Clos de Los Siete

Argentina is an up and coming wine region in South America. The Mendoza region is the largest winemaking region in Argentina, with around 370,000 acres of vines.  Clos de Los Siete is an oasis comprised of seven vineyards in the foothills of the Andes, south of Mendoza. 

I raise my glass to the manager of the winery, Michel Rolland who helped develop the Bordeaux influenced wine region. Rolland, a famed wine consultant to Chateau Pavie-Macquin, put together a group of Bordeaux wine families to invest in vineyards in the ANdes foothills south of Mendoza.  

My wine crush of the day is: the 2007 Clos de Los Siete  is a superb blend of 48% Malbec, 28% Merlot, 12% Syrah, and 12% Cabernet Sauvingnon, offering up a bouquet of toasty oak, violets, mineral, black currant, blueberry, and black cherry. Ripe, sweet, and seamless, it admirably hides its tannin under all the fruit.  It is a 90+ point and $17 on sale at wines.com. This price is quite modest, as it drinks better than most $50 blends.  

Resveratrol, Procyanidins and Sirtuins

Now most of us know that the feeding worms enormous amounts of resveratrol (an antioxidant found mostly in red wine), not only extends their live dramatically, but also increases their activity level, etc.  The only problem seems to be that to obtain the same amount of resveratrol for a human, it would take several cases of wine or more per day!  

Next, we hear that a study was done suggesting that procyanidins in primarily red wine are possibly even more important antioxidants that reserveratrol because they are the more active polyphenols in red wine, so the amount of preocyanidins in a glass or two might be enough to help.  

To confuse the issue to the point of saying -- what? The latest information suggests that the reasons that both work so well is that both activate a family of enzymes called sirtuins, which are the real age-extenders/ activity enhancers.  Have fun googling the three words in the title.  - Denman Moody

Personal Wine's Core Benefit Paradigm

Every business school in America teaches that a successful business must continually spend 10-15% of it's annual gross on adverting - spreading the word about the company and it's products or services! This fact is ubiquitous and a core foundation in any successful business plan.  

Every successful business executive and entrepreneur is at least aware of this fundamental law of business.  However, many don't necessarily tie together the fact that company-branded gifts and amenities actually serve the company in  more than one capacity.

That is, they are now more like business cards, post cards, calendars, brochures, commercials or billboards - only, you can actually drink them and share them with friends.  Instead of being thrown away with the junk mail, company-branded and personalized bottles of wine migrate to the kitchen table, the wine cellar, or even better, right into a wine glass.  

This paradigm demonstrates why Personal Wine is the perfect choice for thanking clients, distributing party or banquet favors, celebrating company milestones and much more.  Every bottle acts as a classy-vehicle for expressing gratitude and for expanding brand awareness simultaneously.

It's literally a win-win; which can be so hard to find in todays business climate.  Why not choose a strategy that can't loose: use Personal Wine as a vehicle to both build your brand and celebrate client relationships at the same time!  

Ten Rules-of-Thumb for Food and Wine Pairing

1.  If you are taking wine as a gift to a dinner party, don't worry about matching the wine to the food unless you have been requested to do so and have enough information about what is being served to make an informed choice.  Just bring a good wine. Match the quality of food and wine.  A grand dinner party with multiple courses of elaborately prepared dishes deserve a better wine than hamburgers on the grill with chips in a bag. 

2.  When you're serving more than one wine at a meal, it is customary to serve lighter wines before full-bodied ones.  Dry wines should be served before sweet wines unless a sweet flavored dish is served early in the meal.  In that case match the sweet dish with a similarly sweet wine.  Lower alcohol wines should be served before high alcohol wines.

3.  Balance flavor intensity.  Pair light-bodied wines with lighter foods and fuller-bodied wines with heartier, more flavorful, richer and fattier dishes.

4.  Consider how the food is prepared.  Delicately flavored foods, poached or steamed, pair with delicate wines.  It is easier to pair wines with more flavorfully prepared foods, braised, roasted or sauteed.  Pair the wine with the sauce, seasoning or dominant flavor of the dish.

5.  Match flavors.  An earthy Pinot Noir goes well with mushroom soup and the grapefruit/ citrus tasted of Sauvignon Blancs goes with fish for the same reason that lemon does.  

6.  Balance sweetness.  An earthy Pinot Noir goes well with food that is sweeter than the wine, although I do like chocolate with Cabernet Sauvignon.  I also like  chocolate with good dark beer.  

7.  Consider pairing opposites.  Very hot or spicy foods, that some Thai dishes, or hot curries for example,  often work best with sweet desert wines.  Opposing flavors can play off eachother, creating new flavor sensations and cleansing the palate.

8.  Match by geographic location.  Regional foods and wines, having developed together over time, often have a natural affinity for each other.

9.  Pair wine and cheese.  In some European countries the best wine is reserved for the cheese course.  Red wines go well with mild to sharp cheese.  Pungent and intensely flavored cheese is better with a sweeter wine.  Goat cheeses pair well with dry white wine, while milder cheeses pair best with fruiter red wines.  Soft cheese like the like the Camembert and Brie, if not over ripe, pair well with just about any red wine including Cabernet, Zinfandel and Red Burgundy.  

10.  Adjust food to better pair with the wine.  Sweetness in a dish will increase the awareness of bitterness and astringency in wine, making it appear drier, stronger and less fruity.  High amounts of acidity in food will decrease awareness of sourness in wine and making it taste richer and mellower, sweet wine will taste sweeter.  Bitter favors in food increase the perception of bitter, tannic elements in wine.  Sourness and salt in food suppress bitter taste in wine. Salt in food can tone down the bitterness and astringency of wine and may make sweet wines taste sweeter.