I’ve been advised numerous ways just how to properly open a wine bottle. This, thankfully, is not one of them.
I will be returning next week with more wine reviews.
Cheers,
Haydn
Category Archives: Other
What wine goes with mexican food?
What wine goes with Mexican food?
As a native San Diegan, I’ve got a special place in my heart for Mexican food. I remember days of going to the beach and loading up prior to hitting the water with dollar fish tacos from the hole-in-the-wall taco shops (please don’t call them tacqerias (sp?)). Since I’ve moved north and the wine world found me, I’ve been on a quest to find a wine that pairs perfectly with Mexican food. And after too many glasses of wine, I’ve found the answer—there isn’t any.
Drink beer and tequila
(in moderation, please)
There is a reason why tequila is grown in Mexico and Mexican beers are the way they are. They are designed to compliment the local foods. Mexican food (which is completely different than Spanish foods) tend to have some heat and spices to them. Green peppers, red peppers, the habenero, coriander / cilantro. All of these blow out your taste buds. You need something to quench the fire, not further expand it. There is a reason why the experts suggest milk (the thicker and creamier the better) to put out the burning in your mouth.
Happy Cinco de Mayo
For one day, I’m putting down the wine glass and picking up a lime (or an orange with tequila) and raising a cold one. And in order are my 3 favorite beers from Mexico. Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone!
3. On the bottom of the ladder is Modelo Especial, from it’s namesake Grupo Modelo. It is the number one selling canned beer brand in Mexico. Modelo is your basic Mexican Lager and is just fine if you’re sitting around with friends eating a bushel of crabs.
2. Tecate – It’s a fuller bodied beer than Corona. It also has a more complex flavor and you don’t need to add a lime. Although many consider Tecate a fairly cheap beer, it’s quite refreshing in a long neck bottle offering more complexity than what cheaper Mexican beers usually give you.
1. Most beer drinkers when they think of Mexican beer think Corona with a lime wedge. Because of recent ad campaigns marketing the beer we probably also think of sitting on the beach with a cold pail of Coronas as well (and there is nothing wrong with that, for the record). Corona Light is a lighter version of Corona Extra. It carries many of the great characteristics of the original with fewer calories.
Corona is a fine staple beer if you’re putting down a couple, but there are tasty alternatives for the more discerning beer drinker. However, it happens to be my favorite beer. While I am a wine snob, I’m not the most picky when it comes to beer.
I do follow my same rule though, “Drink what you like” whether it be beer or wine, or tequila.
Ode to Wine by Pablo Nerudo
by Haydn S. Adams | Beyond Napa Valley Wine Blog
I received this poem from a good friend and colleague of mine, Paula Wood. Poetry, like wine, have similar characteristics. There is a lot of poetry out there, yet it takes a talented poet, much like a winemaker, to organize words into blissful stanzas. However, poetry doesn’t age as well as wine does.
Enjoy,
Haydn
Ode to Wine
by Pablo Neruda
Day-colored wine,
night-colored wine,
wine with purple feet
or wine with topaz blood,
wine,
starry child
of earth,
wine, smooth
as a golden sword,
soft
as lascivious velvet,
wine, spiral-seashelled
and full of wonder,
amorous,
marine;
never has one goblet contained you,
one song, one man,
you are choral, gregarious,
at the least, you must be shared.
At times
you feed on mortal
memories;
your wave carries us
from tomb to tomb,
stonecutter of icy sepulchers,
and we weep
transitory tears;
your
glorious
spring dress
is different,
blood rises through the shoots,
wind incites the day,
nothing is left
of your immutable soul.
Wine
stirs the spring, happiness
bursts through the earth like a plant,
walls crumble,
and rocky cliffs,
chasms close,
as song is born.
A jug of wine, and thou beside me
in the wilderness,
sang the ancient poet.
Let the wine pitcher
add to the kiss of love its own.
My darling, suddenly
the line of your hip
becomes the brimming curve
of the wine goblet,
your breast is the grape cluster,
your nipples are the grapes,
the gleam of spirits lights your hair,
and your navel is a chaste seal
stamped on the vessel of your belly,
your love an inexhaustible
cascade of wine,
light that illuminates my senses,
the earthly splendor of life.
But you are more than love,
the fiery kiss,
the heat of fire,
more than the wine of life;
you are the community of man,
translucency,
chorus of discipline,
abundance of flowers.
I like on the table,
when we’re speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.
Drink it,
and remember in every
drop of gold,
in every topaz glass,
in every purple ladle,
that autumn labored
to fill the vessel with wine;
and in the ritual of his office,
let the simple man remember
to think of the soil and of his duty,
to propagate the canticle of the wine.
—————————-
Haydn is the author of the book, Wineries Beyond Napa Valley. He also teaches the Wonders of Wine class in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as a contributor to vinvillage.com.