Drinking this and eating that.

Viognier & Thai pork lettuce wraps

 

Some love from my kitchen to you.

It's the start of a great friendship between Viognier and Thai pork lettuce wraps. 

Simple and clean flavors with a little Rocky flare.

 First the wine, 2016 VVV Viognier. Pristine golden color with a mouth feel and body of elegance.

 Start by making a brine for the pork, Salt, sugar, Thai green curry paste, fish sauce, onion and garlic.

Place the pork in the brine and put in the cold box for 24 hours. I like to move them around in the brine once.

 Make yourself some coffee in the morning and remove the pork from the brine.

Place pork on a rack over a sheet pan and place it in the cold box for a couple of hours.

This down time in the cold box will help to dry the pork which will help the smoke to stick to the meat.

Save the brine, reduce it down slowly and chill it to create a dipping sauce for the wraps.

So WHY bone-in pork chops? Flavor and cost. I paid only $6.50 total for these two bad boys.

Cooking meat on the bone adds so much more flavor and juciness to the meat.

Feel free to use any type of pork, white meat or shellfish.

 Set your smoker to 140 degrees to cold smoke the pork, not cook it.

Smoke it for a couple hours. If you want to cook it all the way in the smoker go for it.

I prefer to finish it in a very hot oven until done, to about 145 degrees.

While your pork is getting smoky you should consider a slaw.

A simple red cabbge slaw with hints of Asian spice is the perfect garnish for these wraps.

 

Now is a good time to chill your Viognier and wash your lettuce.

Your just about ready to enjoy the fruits of your labor with a perfect pairing.

Rest your pork, remove it from the bone and slice the meat somewhat on the thin side.

Build yourself a couple wraps, first lettuce then pork and slaw. Pour yourself a glass of Viognier.

Roll your wrap up to keep all the goodness inside and dip into your chilled reduced brine.

Enjoy how the two pair so well together like they were meant to be together.

Playing off each others strong points and complementing each others flavors.

Enjoy and keep cooking and drinking good wine.

 

Chef Rocky

Tartrates!

Tartrates

You’re all set and excited to open a bottle of wine, but when you pull the cork you find that the side that was inside the bottle is covered in little red or white crystals. Immediately you begin to wonder if this means there’s something wrong with the bottle that until five seconds ago you had every intention of consuming with abandon. But now this new discovery has given you pause. What the heck is wrong with your wine? And should you still drink it?  

The short answer is that nothing is wrong and you should absolutely still consume it, but the explanation for why those crystals are there in the first place is pretty interesting. Three main acids exist in wine grapes: malic acid, citric acid and tartaric acid. Of the three, it’s tartaric acid that’s responsible for the tartness we get in wine and the acid that creates those lovely crystals. While malic acid is mostly converted to the more mellow and soft lactic acid during fermentation, tartaric acid maintains its chemical consistency. This is the acid which helps maintain a wine’s PH levels and protects it from spoiling, but it doesn’t always like to stay dissolved inside the wine.

 

The tartaric acid compound is very susceptible to temperature fluctuations. Chill a wine down too far and the acid will actually solidify and fall out of the solution. Have you ever gotten to the bottom of a bottle and noticed crystal shards in the wine as you poured the final glass? That’s just tartaric acid’s solid form floating around in the juice. Some people are freaked out by it, which is why they might filter it out, but it’s completely harmless to consume.

 

Think about it, if you don’t see the crystals that means the wine was kept at a consistent temperature, so the acid was never allowed to solidify, but you’re still consuming tartaric acid, just in its liquefied form. If the acid becomes a solid and winds up floating in your wine, and if you happen to swallow it, you’re still consuming the same compound. The perfect comparison here is that its like water that’s been turned to ice. The ice is still water, and it’s harmless, even if it has taken on a different form.

The higher quality your bottle of wine is, the more likely you are to see tartrates. That’s because on the lower end of the wine spectrum, the wine is often cold stabilized in order to filter the tartrates out. This is done by chilling the wine down to near freezing levels and letting the solidified tartrates drop to the bottom of the tank. While this process will ensure a wine’s clarity, lowering a wine’s tartrate levels also impacts a wine’s flavors and hurts its ability to be aged.

 

So if you find yourself coming across tartrates, either stuck to the bottom of your cork or floating around in your glass, consider it a good thing. This means the wine wasn’t over-processed and its beautiful subtleties were preserved, so go ahead and enjoy!

 

Salud!

Introducing "Club Payaso"

An article on our Vineyards in Napa Valley Life

http://www.hudsonprinting-digital.com/Publications/NapaValleyLife/NVLife_MayJune_2014/#/62/

Upcoming Blending Event

Ghee & I were in the Tasting room with some of our wine club members recently and we were talking about blends, we decided to experiment with blending our wines right there and then.  Our creation was amazing! We had a great time and decided to host our very first blending event! …….

How would you like to create your own blend from Villa Vallecito wines?

When: Sat. March 29 2014

Time: 1:00-4:00pm

Where: Villa Vallecito Vineyards

Tickets: members $65.00 per person/non-members $75.00 per person

Includes: Wine for blending, appetizers and a bottle per person of your very own creation.

 

Please reserve your seats as soon as possible as this event is sure to sell out. Seating will be limited. We can’t wait to see what blends you come up with.Who knows your blend could be the inspiration for our next VVV blend.

For those of you that cannot attend we invite you to participate from your home, invite some friends. For an additional fee we can supply you with the wine and beakers, we will be posting pictures, and tweets thru-out the blending event. We will even be available for live feedback via facetime.

We look forward to seeing you!

Salud!

VVV staff

 

January Barrel Tasting

This month we enjoyed a perfect afternoon at the vineyard with our wine club members.  We couldn't have asked for more beautiful weather or company.  We wanted to give everyone a sample of our upcoming 2012 vintages that we will be bottling in April.

Upon arrival our guests were greeted with a glass of our award winning viogner and appetizers. This was a perfect way to toast to the weather as the wine was so refreshing and crisp.

As our guests continued to arrive we began sampling our 2012 Grenache which has been sitting on american oak.  The big blue fruits that are coming out in this wine have given it a lot of depth thus far. Second in line was our Cab Sauv which has an incredible peppery finish. Our payaso, which is our blend of syrah and grenache is coming along nicely too it is incredibly smooth on the palate.

Our Barbera has so much spice it was reminding everyone of the holiday season and baking. Lastly we sampled our Syrah, it is proving itself to be quite the bold wine this year and might just be bigger then the Barbera. We can't wait to see how these wine's taste when they are finished.

Everyone enjoyed soaking up the sun, the views and of course the wine! As the sun began to set on lake melones our members basked in the view. We enjoyed having everyone out and showing off our upcoming wines. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as we enjoyed having you. We look forward to many more events this year!

The Results Are In!

 

The 2014 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition has come to a close and the tallies have been counted.  The San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition is the largest competition of wines in America, and of course you know we submitted our stellar wine for them to judge.  They received a record number of entries this year from over 25 states in America!

The results are in and you can only imagine our excitement when we discovered that we had been given, drum roll please….5 Awards! We hope you will help is in giving a round of applause to Ghee and Nate for creating such masterpieces. Be sure to place your order as soon as possible for these wine's! Here are the wine's that were awarded:

Silver

2011 Viogner

2011 Grenache

2011 Cabernet Sauvignon

2010 Syrah

Bronze

2011 Payaso

On February 15, 2014 there will be a public tasting at the Fort Mason Center and our very own Ghee Hagedorn will be there pouring. To purchase tickets to the event, which will sell out, follow  this link http://winejudging.com/event_tickets.htm.  We would love to see some familiar faces, so join us in tasting wines from all over America.

We want to thank each and every one of our members. Without your continued support our dreams wouldn’t be our realities. A special thank you to our incredible wine maker Nate for making such stellar wines, Thank you!

 

 

 

 

Welcome to La Familia!

Villa Vallecito Vineyards would like to welcome Bethany Jennings as the newest member of our team! 

Born in southern California and raised in the beautiful wine country of Paso Robles, Bethany has an extensive culinary background that has given her the opportunity to explore the food and wine industry.

After graduating from Paso Robles High School, she landed her first baking job at The House of Bread. From there she moved on to bake for such places as the Three Dog Bakery, The Carlton Hotel and Bakery, Brian's Sourdough Breads, and the legendary Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo where she learned the secret behind the pink frosted champagne cake with its trademark pink chocolate curls.

After starting her own family, she joined the even bigger Opolo family, taking on the largest harvest party on the Central Coast. Hosting up to 650 people a night, the Harvest Festival "I Love Lucy Style", spring boarded her into the wine industry. Soon she was utilizing her culinary skills and working with the co-wine maker and caterers to plan wine pairing menus for pick up parties, wine festivals, zin festivals, and special events as well as the Food and Wine pairings on the Patio, and events at both the sister site in Westlake Village and the Opolo Bed and Breakfast.

During her time in Paso Robles she served on the Paso Robles Wine Festival Committee and helped with the Pinot and Paella Festival in Templeton, California. 

When she isn't working, you can find her at home whipping up sweet and savory concoctions while sharing the excitement of cooking and baking with her two young children. 

Her passion for food and wine makes Bethany a perfect fit for Villa Vallecito Vineyards. We look forward to sharing our mutual love of food, wine, and most importantly, hosting events for our wine club members, friends, and family. We can't wait to see what the future holds for us all!

As Bethany joins us, we'd like to take a moment to thank Kelsey Marcos who is leaving the vineyards to pursue a career in Equine Dentistry in Minnesota. We want to express our deep appreciation for all her hard work and all she did during her time with us. She will be missed and we hope you will all join us in wishing her luck on her grand adventure. 

Bethany's first event will be our December 7th Christmas Barrel Tasting with Ghee and our wine maker Nate. We hope to see as many of you there as possible and please introduce yourself to Bethany. As she says, you can't miss her; she'll be the tallest one in the room.

If you can't make it to our Christmas Party please head on down to our tasting room located at 263 Main Street Suite C in Murphy's. Many Blessings and Happy Holidays! The VVV Staff

Summer Wine Club Event

This past weekend, we enjoyed a fun and warm evening with our wine club members and their guests.  A lot of hard work went into putting on the event, and the result was a lot of celebration and partying. 

The event began early in the day as our amazing Tapas on the Terraza chiefs fired up the wood stove and began to prep the pizzas.  Meanwhile, also in the kitchen, the ladies were preparing hors d'oeuvres and making sangria.  A big thank you must be mentioned to the help in the tasting room during this time.  Without those ladies, none of this would be possible.

5:30 quickly rolled around and the guests began piling into the vans at the Murphys Suites.  Although it was 102 degrees, everyone was looking forward to the breeze that would come from standing above beautiful Lake Melones.  As the guests were chartered to the vineyard, gasps of astonishment could be heard from the passengers who had never been to our location.  The view of the green vineyard below the Mexican style home was breathtaking.  Once atop the hill, and at the patio, I'm not sure what there was more of, sangrias being passed out, or pictures being taken!

Guests were able to quench their thirst with Ghee's secret sangria recipe as they sat by the pool and took in the beautiful scenery.  Their sangrias were complimented with spiced cucumbers (cucumbers drizzled with fresh lime juice and sprinkled with Tajin Clasico Seasoning) and spinach-artichoke dip. 

After the guests were able to settle, the wine tasting began! Everyone enjoyed a nice sample of our 2012 Viognier, 2012 Sabor A Mi, 2011 Grenache, 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2011 Payaso and 2010 Syrah.  Although these were all a hit, the real pleaser of the night was getting to take a vertical flight among our signature Barbera.  Guests got to start with our first wine ever bottled, the 2008 Barbera, from there they moved onto the 2010, 2011, and were even served some 2012 which was just pulled from the barrel that afternoon.  With this flight, tasters were able to compare the different years and complexities side by side for a very interesting taste.

As the wine was being poured, the smell of fresh pizza could be sensed in the air.  Our chiefs began pulling gourmet pizzas out of the wood stove as the guests served themselves some caesar salad. 

Once bellies were full, the guests began getting glasses of their favorite wines and sitting with their feet in the pool enjoying the sunset and good company.  Powdered sugar covered brownies and fresh strawberries were served for dessert as the music was turned up and the dancing began.  After a long, hot evening of fun and festivities, the vans loaded up the delighted guests and took them home to talk about this event for days to come.