Barrel to Bottle: Junk Food and Wine Pairings

Hello, and welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I am Pat. I clean the cold water wine chillers at Binny's Beverage Depot. We got everybody in the room today, and we got some fun stuff to talk about. Who else is here? I'm Greg, I do communications. I'm Alicia, I do wine. Roger, I do seltzer water. Hard iced tea. He's embraced it, his actual job. Hey, so we have a special guest today, first time joining us. We have Emily Tyrannosaurus Topolus from some other, what's Nicka? Nickatopolis. Emily. Just a little bit Greek. Emily. Oh, yeah. Emily, what store are you from? I'm from the Montgomery store, but just transferring over to Naperville. Nice. Cool. What do you do here? I do wine. Cool. So we got to drink wine today. All right. Pat normally skips the wine episodes, but he heard there were going to be nachos, and so he signed up. Not just any nachos. Very sad nachos. Sad nachos. I was about to call them authentic. I told her she's going to love my recipe for sad quesadillas. Why are we eating sad nachos today? What are we doing here? I wanted to do something that cater to the more average consumer. When you look at wine pairings in food, it's usually just something so untangible. I got a few of them. It's salmon on a bed of asparagus with balsamic vinaigrette, lamb burgers with lemony yogurty caper sauce. That sounds delicious. Wait a minute. Lemony yogurty caper sauce? Yeah. It's a Greek thing. Is that tartar sauce? I mean, grilled sore fish with tomato cucumber salad. I just feel like- You didn't bring any of that? No. What the f***? Nobody eats that. Maybe once a week, but most of the people are just grabbing something easy on the way home from work, something for the kids. So that's where I came up with this. A little wine for the kids, yeah. Yeah. That's the cuisine of the Wine Spectator editorial board. Yeah. So I mean, the people in our wine department get asked all the time like, Oh, I'm making this for dinner. What should I have? So you are saying this is what people are honestly making for dinner, and this is what they should be pairing with? This is mostly what I'm making for dinner. I can respect that. More comfort food. So I just figured we can pair good wines with comfort food, that it shouldn't be super intimidating with some of the big wine pairings. No matter what you're eating, you can pair wine with it. Yeah. Or it doesn't have to be a full dinner. It can just be like you're snacking on something, having wine with that. Yeah. I think for too long, we've surrendered these foods to beer, and people just think, Oh, I'll have beer with this more junk food type thing. No, there are wines that can go with it as well. Nobody drinks beer anymore. It's hard seltzer. You heard Roger. Hard seltzer, hard teas. So, what are we starting off with today, Emily? We have an appetizer of nachos. Ooh, I get it. I paired it with the Lausanne Blanco. It is a white wine from Spain. Two grape varietals with this one, 50-50 Macabeo and Sauvignon Blanc. Macabeo, what is that? So, I mean, Macabeo is a Spanish varietal. You'll actually know it more for its use in cava. But still widely grown, and so here we see it in a still wine that Emily has picked out that I've actually never had before, but super pale, kind of watery in color, like a pale straw. So I think Emily, what you want us to do, right? We're going to taste this wine on its own and just share brief thoughts. Yeah. And then we're going to dive into the nachos. But tell us about these sad nachos. Yeah. What kind of nachos do we have? Look at them. They're so murpy. Murpy, huh? It's just microwave melted cheese on tortilla chips. Yeah. We've got a paper plate with tortilla chips. And did we shred this cheese ourself or did this come shredded out of a bag that we just dumped on top? Shredded with the cardboard pieces that we all know shredded cheese comes with. It's the Mexican blend? Yeah, it's the store brand Mexican blend. You're going fancy. I would have gone just cheddar. Well, it was two for six, so I almost got one of each, but then I didn't. Pat's touching all of my chips. See, this is classic. Look, it counts as one nacho. You got a picture of it for the time off the chip. It's a brick. Oh, that's the episode art. Great. With Pat's stupid T-shirt in the background. This is an institution of higher learning. Oh, man. These are microwaved nachos, which I have to admit, I actually, I don't think I've ever made, at least in recent memory, putting nachos or tortilla chips in the microwave, but we did learn earlier that this is Pat's go-to method of making nachos. To be fair, I haven't had this in 20 years, but for a solid 10 years, this is the only way I ate nachos. Roger, are you going to dodge actually admitting eating this? So I would say that this is preferable to using fake Velveeta cheese. I mean, opening the jar cheese. All right. Well, that's damning with faint praise. I have had this not long ago. I'm not embarrassed to admit that. You have kids. It wasn't a meal. It was maybe later in the evening than I should have been eating. I think we're supposed to be talking about the wine. Okay. More often, I think what people do is they make a quesadilla in the microwave. So they'll just take two soft tortillas, put cheese in the middle and nuke it. Yeah. Thank you. Greg's definitely done that. So before we hear about why Emily chose this wine with food and talk about the pairing, I really actually just like the wine on its own. This wine is great. I think it's really fun. It's very fresh. You get the aromatics from the Sauvignon Blanc, as Emily mentioned, it's 50 percent Sauvignon Blanc. Then the Macubayo gives a little more oomph, a little more weight to it. Totally. Love it. Tortilla chips also fresh. Okay. The wine. Pair heavy fruit salad in a can. Then it has a spicy quality on the nose that I did not expect. This is like seven or eight bucks, right? Yeah, 8.99. 8.99. Wow. Spanish wine. It's good quality. Hot in the streets. Real deal. This has, I pick up a lot of watermelon on this, which makes me think of spicy. Jolly Richard. Jolly Richard too. Okay. Real watermelon. Come on. It's definitely got a tropical component to it for sure. Yeah. And acidity. Not a ton, but it's definitely refreshing. Yep. Yeah. With the salty and the kind of the oily cheese, you kind of need something fresh on the palate. It's a little bit, kind of brings a little bit more zing back to it. It just kind of brightens everything. Plus, I mean, it kind of reminds me a little bit of like a margarita with your nachos. That's a good point. Like a lemon, lime. Okay. I'm finally diving into the chips. I'm like you animals. Oh, by finally diving in, he means literally covering our whole plate of nachos that we're sharing with his meaty paws. Yeah. Those are all yours now. Why is it so greasy? You talk about the chips. For a guy who eats as much cheese as you, you should really know that the cheese is going to be greasy. Okay. Where's the salsa? Oh, it's around, right? It's behind Roger. We're putting salsa on these? So I think one interaction that is happening is that it's important that you pick a wine, which Emily did with this, that has enough fruitiness to it. Because you see, I think the fruit intensity in the wine falls off a little bit when you have it with the food. But fortunately, there's still plenty of fruit there. So when you do make your sad nachos, doing a high acid kind of fruity wine is your recipe for success. It's perfect. Jim, did you try the pairing? I did not. You went on these chips? Obviously. I'll just put my finger here and you just pull. Okay, this one's mine. This whole episode is the clips episode. All right. Good work, Emily. You derailed us early. Good. And it's going to happen often on this one. That's wonderful. That's why I thought this would be fun. It's light-hearted. It's easy comfort food. I like it better without the paste salsa. You do. Okay, so the pepperiness has got to interact with the white wine, right? Yeah. Probably. Okay, I'm diving in. New York City. Oh, yeah. With the salsa, you get the tropical fruit of it falls off a little bit, and you just get more of that zippiness with the spicy. So you get more lemon, lime, minerality. I feel like that tropical fruit fell off with a little bit with the salsa. I agree. But it's not bad. Do you think the tomato has some sweetness and that it's messing with the fruit? Yeah, I think that's in play. So you get the sweetness from the tomato and just a lot of dard salsas have sugar in them. So that sweetness isn't paired well because the wine doesn't have any sweetness and your wine needs to be sweeter than your food. Then additionally, as Emily said, because of the little bit of spice, that takes away the fruit quality in the wine. So yeah, so we'll stick with the cheese over the chips. Yeah. Okay. Verdict here. The wine is a great value, incredible value. Yeah. It's $9 basically. Enjoy it with the cheesy nachos, but not with the salsa. Yeah. Cheese only. Indeed. Good work. Unless you want to whip up your own pico de gallo as opposed to going to New York City. So I was telling Emily in the kitchen while we were preparing this gourmet feast that I lived off of this in college. Morning after, wake up, it was top ramen, chicken flavor, every day, all day. 25 cents, can't beat it. That's shocking, that's actually shocking. Really? Yeah. In a good way? I mean, okay, so the noodles themselves are like one of the worst for you foods that exists. Really? Yeah, because they're deep fried. They're deep fried to get that crispiness, and then you just put more sodium on them. So whatever, it doesn't matter. I'm guilty of, as a kid, like smashing up a packet with the powder inside and just eating it like chips. Ew. That's disgusting. Oh, don't knock it till you try it. Whatever, ramen diet person. Whatever. These still are in demand, these top ramen bowls, because... Yeah, we were microwaving them when we went in there. One of them was stolen. So we had to go running around the office, asking, where's the ramen? Where's the ramen? Who took our ramen? I don't know. I don't know. But she came in... We'll leave her out. We'll leave her out. But she, she squirreled it away in one of the cabinets, in like the back of the cabinet for later. Somebody took the ramen and... And squirreled it away in the cabinet. Told us we can't leave food on that table, because that is the communal... That is the communal food table. It was only on there for like 10 minutes. Trust us, we know. All right, so we all have a bowl of top ramen in front of us. Various flavors. That flavor blasted ours. Is the flavor... I only used a little bit of it though. Is the flavor blasting worth it? Should I do that? Emily, what did you pick out to pair with this kind of desperate last minute, you want dinner in three minutes, you're making ramen, don't care about your health meal. So I thought of a nice sparkling Prosecco to go with it. So I specifically chose an extra dry style, which has just a little bit of residual sugar, because I thought that if you're doing a spicy ramen, the sugar could help with it. Also just bring a little bit of life into it. Not a lot of sweetness here to compete with any fruit or soft sweetness in the Prosecco, and plenty of salt to go with any sweetness. Again, so we got an oily broth, kind of a salty mixture. So again, something with good crisp acidity to kind of break up that. Also, there's not much texture to this. So I thought maybe wine with a little bit of texture, the bubbles could kind of liven it up a little bit. That's interesting. Yeah, because then you just have mushy noodles and soup. This is a fine pairing, honestly. I like this. I'm quite enjoying this. It is the bubbles scrub just enough of that heavy, oily, fatty ramen BS off. I got to tell you, it was actually a $1.09 for these individual nice-looking ramen bowls. And it really classes up the dollar ramen bowl. Yeah. I agree. The acid as well obviously helps cut through the fattiness of the dish. But also, I like that you chose Prosecco because we do think of it as kind of a fruitier, sparkling wine. And when we have this much umami, we have to have a lot of fruit in the wine to handle that. So the specific Prosecco that I got is the La Bella. It's only $9.99, so we're talking only $10 here. Yeah, La Bella. Yeah. Even for Prosecco, that seems kind of inexpensive. Yeah. I mean, it's a nice quality too. I mean, you can get a good quality Prosecco for around the $10 range. This is pretty much textbook, right? Pretty much textbook Prosecco. Yeah. Yeah. It has that pear fruit note. It's got a little bit of sweet. Bright and fresh. It's good. And then that little bit of sugar, you can feel slightly kind of creamy mouth feel. Helps the bubbles become less aggressive. But yeah, as Pat said, kind of a nice palate cleanser after the ramen. Are you putting it in your ramen? That's kind of gross. What are you doing? I don't know. What's it going to taste like? We're doing apples to oranges here too because Emily, Pat, and Greg, we all have the original soy sauce flavor. Roger has the beef and you got the chicken? Chicken. This is the only flavor of ramen I've ever had. Alicia has the chicken. If you pour some Biseko into the ramen. That's the only flavor of ramen you've ever had? Yeah. You insisted on getting the only flavor of ramen that you've ever had again? Yes. Mix it up, man. Your job is to taste things for a living. How are you not going to taste something different? I honestly thought when she requested the chicken ramen, I thought, well, she's had all the ramen since she knows her favorite. Yeah. That would make sense. Here's the thing. That sounds disgusting. There's literally a pile of shrimp ramens in our office next to your desk. I know. I look at them every day. You should have one sometime. They're delicious. If I am only spending a dollar on my dinner, you can bet it's not going to have anything shrimp in it. Pat goes to all you can eat sushi places. I will pass. All you can eat sushi last night. I'm alive. I'm here today. It was totally fine. Thirty-four pieces of sushi and nigiri later. Wait, she didn't say that out loud. Two thoughts. One, this ramen is not as salty as the other one. Yes. Nice. I think that still though, that's part of what makes this work so well is the whole salty sweet thing. Yes, and savory. A lot of savory in mine, at least. The ramen got really fruity when I poured the Prosecco into the ramen, by the way. Gross. It wasn't gross. It was quite delicious. It definitely made it cold, but it's fine. Did you guys get any vegetables in yours? I think they all sank. Yes, they were on top with the spices that our esteemed hosts didn't mix in for us. So when I mixed it in, they all sunk to the bottom. They all sank to the bottom. Have you guys ever made pasta salad with ramen noodles? Like as a crispy thing on the top? No, you cook them. What? Make it into a non-brothy noodle salad, like an Asian ramen noodle salad. That sounds about as Asian as Grandma Courtney's Asian noodle salad from the Wisconsin Family Cookbook. It's Americanized, but I mean, you cut up like green onions and carrots and tofu. No, okay. All right. Anyway, verdict on the pairing. Great pairing. Good. Great pairing. Winner. Solid ramen, very nice Prosecco. The pairing is greater than the sum of its parts, I would say. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. Eventually Roger's gonna stop making noise. And that is the goal of food and wine pairings, right? Messy. Did you spill more food all over the floor of the conference room? I was trying to get you to try that ramen as well. I did. So I poured some out of that bowl into a bowl. You tried the beef? How's the beef compared to the soy? Hang on. You're gonna get a live ramen report. Much more umami than the soy. Somehow. Interesting. Yeah. The soy one almost kind of has like a miso feel to it. It's just really salty. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. It's just salt. Yeah. The soy is just salt. The beef is definitely more umami. So it's very nice. I like how the beef says no added MSG. It's an interesting little caveat. It's naturally occurring MSG. You know who I know just keeps a packet of MSG on her desk? What? Just powdered pure MSG. That is true, but the statement is misleading. I use MSG in our wine classes to give the umami flavor and show pairing preferences with it. Yeah. I just haven't moved it. She actually just sprinkles it on the pimento cheese and cracker sheets at the desk. Like Pantani sprinkles celery salt all over the little wheels of the little baby belt cheese. She just does that with the MSG pile. Yeah. Pizza time? It's pizza time. Wow, this is a sh**ty looking pizza. Look at this. It's got the corrugated cardboard it's sitting on underneath. Has the classic grease on the bottom. Are you guys okay admitting what kind of pizza you bought? We live in the greatest pizza city in the world, and look what you bought. Let it be known, so greatest pizza city in the world is not the point of this episode. Okay. Well, this is some classy pizza. But I was told to get a $5 pizza. Oh, the $5 challah. And you didn't show up with Little Caesars. Indeed. The idea was that lots of people make frozen pizza. So in lieu of that we don't have an oven here. What's your top frozen pizza brand, Alicia? I don't know one. You don't know a frozen pizza brand? You don't know one. Oh my God. You just added yourself there. What are you talking about? You're not a Rockefeller. For sure, you had a frozen pizza before. You don't even know a name you could say to hide this. DiGiorno. Okay, there you go. One that advertises on TV. Roger, what's yours? Screamin Sicilian. Screamin Sicilian is a decent pie, yeah. Those are really good. Emily, what you got? I gotta go DiGiorno Rising Crusts. DiGiorno? I am a sucker for the Home Runnin Butter Crust. Home Runnin. Big sucker for Home Runnin. Although I really like the cheap Jacks when it's done, and it's super, I've tried all the super thin crust ones, like side by side actually, and Jacks is decent. Jacks is like the one in the morning after a whole bunch of meh meh meh meh meh meh. PBRs and like that's a good pizza for that. Okay, let me tell you the story of this pizza. I got the frozen pizza and I cooked it last night, because I thought it would be funny to have leftover pizza and we don't have an oven in the office. And I took it out of the oven and first of all, they like off centered the sauce and cheese, whatever automated disk of toppings drops down on this thing. So the whole thing was like a printing error. You got a bad frozen pizza? Yeah. And dude, I bought the cheapest one I could find, because I thought it would be hilarious. It was only $3. It was a $3 frozen pizza. What was it? I want to say Palermos. Palermos? Palernos, I don't know. Salernos? Those definitely started with a P. No matter. So I cooked it and I thought I cut a very thin strip out of the center, thinking you guys wouldn't notice that I stole some pizza for myself last night. And I tried it and it was complete dog. Just complete dog. It was gross. So you got pizza hut instead. So there's one near my house and I ran home to get- Frozen dog versus fresh dog. Well, hey, you know what? We're going to find out. We're going to find out. Okay, that's fair. So what wine are we pairing with this dog? So Emily has picked a Colossi Nero d'Avola from Sisley for us today to go with our dog pizza, as I would call it. So Emily, what did you have in mind when you picked the wine? Why did you select this one? So when I was doing the research, everything wanted to be paired with GSM blend, Chianti, Montepucciano, and I just didn't want to do that. So did a lot of research, tried a lot of wines with a lot of crappy pizza, and I learned that a lot of wines change for the worse when it comes to pizzas. It just brings out the volatile acidity, things like that, the spiciness of the barrel, what you don't really want that to be the forefront. So I tried this one and I liked this wine because it didn't change all that much when you tried it with the food. It still shines with the food. So that's why I chose this one. I thought you chose it because we had authentic Italian food. Authentic Sicilian pizza pie. Just like a mama used to make. So this one is only $13.99, it's only 14 bucks. Yeah, so it's $5 on your pizza, $13.99 on your wine. It has a lot of guts for that much money. It's not super tannic, but the acidity is there. Yeah. The fruit has an underlying bramble or a readiness or something, not super vegetal, but something darker that offers a taste structure thing. Yeah, for sure. I get almost an olive-y tone to it, which is nice. One word, thank you. Much better. Interesting that you picked it because it doesn't change. I mean, it really doesn't change that much with the pizza. You already did it? Yeah. Did you ever dove into the pizza? We're taking it slow, man. We'll try the wine on its own. All right, fine. I thought it was great, and I think olive is spot on. Olive is, yeah, and a little bit of spice. Would you be perfect for you, Greg, because your favorite pizza is? Green olive, Roger. What? I mean. It's not cheese pizza with green olive. So redeeming thing here, we could have had a worse pizza today. I really like this pairing. The wine has enough acid to stand up to the tomato sauce and also cut through the very, very poor quality cheese that's used. This pizza is not that bad. It's not that bad. But then that kind of olivey savory note that's been mentioned, I think is only accentuated when you have it with pizza. That's true. I like it. It's delightful. The fruit is still there. It's still super cherry berry, like darker. I mean, it's really nice. Unlike this pizza. If you guys want to try a bad pizza, I will go and get that foil-wrap leftover frozen cold pizza, and you will beg for some more pizza. Here's the thing. People don't go to McDonald's and compare a McDonald's hamburger to a half a pound restaurant hamburger, yet somehow the really inexpensive pizzas are supposed to be on par with a five-dollar pizza. So this is fine for cheap pizza, or it's on par with frozen pizza. That's when we learned Roger also owned a Papa John's franchise. Yes. If I owned anything, it would be Little Caesar's. Five dollars, hot and ready. Meal for the whole family for only five dollars. Another favorite that I love offering in the stores with pizza is Barbera. Barbera from the Piedmont region, another good value option. I think we've all actually tasted it on our Piedmont podcast, but another high acid, red fruit dominant, really food-friendly wine. This is a solid pairing. What would be an oddball wine choice if you had to pick something for pizza that wasn't a red? Is it doable? At first, I was going to say lamb rusco would be refreshing, but obviously that's red. Acidity, something like a Sauvignon Marque would be okay. No. I would almost do a rosé. That would be nice too, something dry. Or a really buttery. I'm just going to keep talking with my mouth full. Buttery everybody. A Chardonnay. All right. So that's with cheese sticks, cheesy bread, Chardonnay and cheesy bread. Jim wanted that cheesy bread. Sorry, Jim. Look, the Little Caesars was a mile and a half away, and the Pizza Hut is about four blocks from me. Knowing how pizza is a hut. It's a shame pizza places aren't known for delivering to your house. I know. Okay. We live in a pizza mecca. I live in a pizza mecca. There's Graziano's and La Rosa, and there's Pequod's, Bird's Place, and this place called Nano's. And the Village Inn makes a nice tavern pizza. Yeah. Yeah. And I always forget a bunch of them. There's so many good pizzas here. I don't understand. I mean, Pizza Hut is a beloved childhood favorite, but I don't understand how they stay in business in our neighborhood. Yeah. I don't understand how Pizza Hut stays in business in Chicago. And there's Lou Mao's, and there's years on us within striking distance. I don't understand. The last time I had pizza, I think you would get a kick out of this, was on Back to the Future Day. We got Pizza Hut. Another old movie, Roger celebrates with a day off work and some needless frivolity. Is there like a lot of pizza in Back to the Future Day? Back to the Future 2, it's like the scene with the frozen pizza that's a little teeny packet. Oh yeah, that's right. And the guy has two ties. Are we donuts now? Oh yeah, donuts and... I was about to complain about the tasting order of the food, but I suppose this is fine. This makes a lot of sense. Interesting donut that stands up on its end here. I don't know why you positioned it like that. It's a flat on one end. No, gross. Well, they didn't have good ones at night when I was at the grocery store. These are suspiciously heavy. These are from last night. These are yeasty-ass donuts. Roger, they're prefabricated. I'm sure they're from a week and a half ago. Yeah. Come on, Roger. These are from last night. I demand freshness. I was going to tell somebody to pick up these donuts, but then I saw these on the way out. Don't go for yeasted donuts from a grocery store. Go for the cakey, old-fashioned ones that are all craggly. Are we done criticizing the donuts? Look at how disappointed Roger is. I'll stick up for your pizza, but this donut, I will not stand for the night. You don't want to buy donuts at 8 o'clock at night. This is what they had at the store, and I was told glazed donut. Yeah, just a classic. This checks the box for glazed donut. Yeah. Greg, I appreciate the effort. Yeah, Roger, go scratch. Waited till the last minute, obviously. All right, glazed donuts. Just giving you the business. We got to try the wine before the donuts. Just giving them the business. Okay. Oh, peachy. Yeah. Peachy strawberry. So this is the Bartoneura Rosé Sparkling Moscato. Wow, this is sweet. Yes. Well, you always want your wine to be sweeter than what you're eating. If it's the opposite way, it's going to kill your wine and we don't want to do that. So obviously, Moscato is super sweet, should be sweeter than the donut. Hopefully, it won't change too much when we have the donut. So this one is $14.99 on the shelf, so we're climbing up a little bit with price. This is a sparkling rosé? Correct. It's not that rosé though, it's more salmon. This is a perfect pairing. You just turned this into a strawberry glazed donut. Roger, stopped bitching about the donut as soon as he got the wine in his mouth. It changed a mediocre, sweaty donut into a freshly strawberry glazed. A strawberry glazed delight. Can I double down on what you're saying? Because when I tried the Moscato, go back and listen to the tape. I was just overwhelmed by its sweetness. But when I have the donut in my mouth, there's actually- All of a sudden the wine tastes dry. The fat in the donut also really cuts down on the wine, and it's incredibly perceptible on your palate. Suddenly, I realized I'm eating dessert, I'm drinking dessert, it actually works together. Yeah. I think that the sweetness is tapered down just a little bit. You get more of the fruit in the wine. Look how happy Roger is. He's so happy. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. This is what pairing is all about. This is good. I've had donuts for dinner before. Who hasn't? Oh, when someone brings in donuts for work. You take it home. Thank you. That's the first one that I'm not the trashiest junk food person. You get a dozen, you can't eat it all at breakfast, so you got dinner. Basic economics warrant that you buy donuts in the dozen, not a single cup. Do you want to get ripped off or do you want some donuts? Come on. This is a heavenly pairing. Seriously, this is a delight. Way to redeem this just waste of space of a donut. Whatever, it's a donut. Dude, even a bad donut, it's like pizza. Even if it's bad, you're still having pizza, right? Yeah, that's fair. This is a pretty bad donut, but. It's definitely dense. It's a dense donut, but it's good. It's a meal of a donut. This is a dinner donut. That's what it is. Exactly. Boy, did that wine lift it up. I could just eat this all day. Well, I'm finishing this pairing. It's the one I'm, well, no, who am I kidding? I finished the pizza too. The pizza that you complained about relentlessly? Listen, it's kind of my MO. What else to say about this one? Yeah, it works very, very well. It is a very sweet wine. It does say spumante dolce on it. It's 7% alcohol. So if you don't know what you're getting into, read the label. With this Moscato, they're stopping fermentation early. They cool down that tank really quickly. Thus, the 7% alcohol? Filled throughout the yeast. So just one fermentation that they stop early. That's how they're getting it, of course, from the Piedmont region. And another nice thing about it, it's still very, the Moscato variety is very floral. It's very perfumed. It's very grapey. And you get all that when you smell the wine. And then as everyone, especially Roger has pointed out, the strawberry, like lots of fruit come out then with the doughnut. So well done, Emily. Thank you. I so want a coffee right now. Roger, what's your favorite doughnut? Ooh. Is a punch key a doughnut? It is, but it wouldn't be that. It would be like an old fashioned buttermilk doughnut, the ones that are all craggly. Is it cruller? No, that's like, those are the spinny ones kind of. These are like, they cut them and then when they hit the fat, they kind of like break apart a little bit. And then they usually glaze them. Old fashioned doughnut if you saw it, yeah. I think glaze them, yeah. Pat, what's yours? Boston Cream Long John. If they made it, that would be it. So probably regular Boston Cream. Boston Cream, yeah. Alicia, what's yours? So I much prefer salty things and sweet, and so you'll make fun of my doughnut choice. She's also never had a doughnut before. No, I've had doughnuts. But actually, you know the little, the round doughnut holes, but just the chocolate ones, the chocolate glazed. Those are my favorite. Those are good. Emily? I would go for a chocolate long john only because the long johns, I feel like you get more doughnut per doughnut. For sure. Because you don't have the hole in the center, so I feel like I'm getting more of my doughnut. It was my standard doughnut order as a kid because I default one of the largest doughnut I could get. Exactly. Okay. I don't know. Smart play. I don't know when this happened, but at some point in my life, I started finding delight in a cake doughnut with frosting and sprinkles. Sprinkles. They're the dumbest little things. They don't taste like anything, but you're like, hee-hee. Those hold up the best. I would say that that's what my family got the most because the yeast ones are just like, you need to eat them immediately before the air hits them. Yeah. It's a good day old doughnut. Apple fritters are pretty bomb too. Like on vacations, we go to the small town grocery store. I thought you were about to say you incorporated some kind of orchard visit in your family vacations, which would make just perfect sense. Well, that would be apple cider doughnuts, not apple fritters, which are also the bomb. Yeah. You know what? Apple cider doughnut might be my favorite doughnut over Boston, Korea. You always forget about those until the fall time. Yeah. We have a big apple orchard by our place, way out in the western suburbs, and they make incredible apple cider doughnuts. Because, I mean, let's face it, whenever you're getting a doughnut, the minute it's made, it's going to be the best doughnut. Just like beignets, beignets count too. So when you get a beignet, the minute it comes out of the oil, that's pretty awesome doughnut. All right. So we're going to stay on the sugar side of things. Let's do a doughnut podcast. We already did. Well, we did a Punchkey podcast. Yeah, that's true. Roger has a guy. He has a Punchkey guy. Punchkey? Punchkey? Is it ice cream next? Yes. Yo, you didn't get mousse cracks? No, no, no, I'm, okay, stay faithful to that. No cookie dough? It's not sealed. It's going classic. This is one that kids like a lick. Yeah. Boy, if there's one person I know who would have been deeply disturbed by that trend two years ago, it was Roger. Roger is pouring the sherry on his ice cream now. This was only a matter of time. We haven't even gotten started, man. You don't know how long I've done this many times. Usually, I'm putting dates and figs and pecans on it too. Oh, yum. That's so decadent. You have it? Yep. You know what's not decadent? Plain vanilla ice cream. That's not that decadent for Roger. You know, Roger actually has a guy at his house who feeds him grapes. I wasn't going to go there, but dates on there. Turning the Dean's basic beef vanilla into something heavenly. It's cheap junk food, man. I get it. It smells so good. If there's one person I know who's got an artisanal ice cream supplier that they lean on, it's going to be Roger. Roger's like, wow, look at this. Yeah, I pour enough. This is syrup. I pour enough so you have enough to dump on your ice cream. So what do we have? What's the wine? So I decided to pair this with the Lustal San Emilio Pedro Imendes Sherry. It is $25.99 on the shelf. This is the most expensive wine, but the good thing is you can have this bottle open for a while. You don't need to go through it all in one, I mean, you can. Open and refrigerate it, probably? Yeah, it'll last for a couple of weeks, for sure. Yeah, especially with the sugar content. Keep in mind, a lot of people just think all fortifieds will kind of stick around for a month or two, like you would think of port. But with sherry and especially some of the dry styles of sherry, like Fino, you can't. I mean, you should consume that just as you would kind of a normal wine, so within a week. Now, PX is both the grape varietal and the style of sherry, right? Yeah. So they actually sun-dried these grapes just north of the Herath region and they dry out then on these mats and shrivel up and concentrate the sugars. Pat's whiskey shorthand is, if it says PX, it's going to be a sweet whiskey. If it says PX, it's going to be a crowd pleaser of a whiskey. A crowd pleaser of a whiskey. Yeah. So I love putting honey on my ice cream. So I'm like, okay, how can I translate this into the wine world? What is nutty viscuous sweets? And I'm like, oh man, PX, this is it. So you can drink it on its own or we can pour it right over our ice cream. I've never done this. Like Roger did 10 minutes ago. My whole life I've never done this. And I was like, whatever. But then I smelled it and I'm like, oh no, oh no. Oh no, yes or oh no, no? Oh no, yes. Because this wine, oh my God. So this wine is so awesome. I've not poured it on my ice cream yet, like Roger, but when you have the ice cream and then go back to the wine, you get all of that nuttiness way more amplified and it's amazing. Yeah, cause trying the wine first, it's like coffee, nutty caramel. Trying the wine at first, it's just like caramelized raisin and just like sweet, sweet fruit. But then you try the ice cream with something sweeter, like you mentioned earlier, it's important that when your parents sweet, you have a sweeter food and you go back to the wine, that nuttiness is just totally turned up to 10. You're right. You're right. Oh, yum. And it even, it's a very viscous wine, like you said, Emily, but ice cream is creamy, obviously. And it actually like makes the wine seem a little more thin and sharper and brighter and it brings it to life. Yeah. Ready to pour it on? Yeah. Let's do it. Yes. If anyone's ever had rum raisin ice cream, you're going to dig. Yeah. That's what it kind of transforms this into. That's what this Pedro Jimenez. Really shocked Roger likes rum raisin ice cream. That's Kevin, an old guy, ice cream. Oh my gosh, it's so f**king good. This is the... Wow. You guys, this is the cat's pajamas. This is so good. It is though. It is. It is so f**king good. Oh man. This is the gift that keeps on giving here with the PX, because another suggestion you had for a sweet wine like this, was like your leftover chocolate cake or something like that. Any of your desserts that you just have lying around, this would work well. Again, you're not going to drink the whole bottle in a night. If you do, that's impressive and well, you really are going to get diabetes. It's a lot of sugar, it's a lot of sugar. Dude, we're getting paid to do this right now. How have I never done this in my life? This is awesome. I love the vanilla, but what if like a salted caramel? Salt, we need salt. Where's the salt? Where's your MSG pack, Alicia? Let me go get my purse. Oh, man. You know what else you can do with this, is you can make a milkshake where you use this instead of milk. That's pretty darn good, too. So you've done that. Yep. That is a map milkshake. That is the opposite of an energy shake. Roger has had one of those milkshakes while floating in his pool. I have them while floating in a lake. That's no joke. That's a true story. Nothing such as Wisconsin, like a little sherry milkshake. They love booze drinks up there. They make the Brandy Alexander's, Grasshoppers, all that stuff. Yeah, if you want boozy ice cream, there's one state at the top of that list for sure. Yep. So what I love too about the wines you picked, Emily, is everything is very affordable. Yeah. And this $25.99 was the most expensive, but we've already explained you can use it for a longer period of time and with different things. But there's no reason why when you have your $5, $7, $8 meal, that you can't elevate it and have a nice wine that's not expensive. It's totally the goal. I mean, these are really easy foods that I know we don't want to admit that we have, but we probably have more than often. We're definitely not cooking up swordfish every night. So I mean, this is just, it's fun food, it's fun wines, it's affordable, and it's not intimidating. Both of the wines and the food complement each other. Nothing's competing and nothing is falling short. So thanks. Oh man. Totally. Seriously. Last night I was buying these groceries and I felt like apologizing to the cashier. I could not imagine how divine and transformative some of these are. This last one too, I mean, I know we've been saying that these are very simple, easy prep kind of things. If you serve this at a dinner party as the dessert course, people would be thoroughly impressed. Yeah. I mean, you put this in a nice dish, put some whipped cream on it, you could garnish it with something really easy like raisins, chopped up walnuts. Or even some fresh berries, even raspberries. Yeah. I mean, this was next level dessert. That's a really good point. I officially forgive you for not bringing moose tracks ice cream. Should we go around and say our favorite pairing? I know everyone liked most all of them, but one that stands out? Easily the ice cream and PX. Yeah, they all work, they all work. Yeah, but the donut, I would never have picked up a rosé sparkling Moscato, but wow. Yeah. And yeah, and I still like the pizza. It's pizza. Yeah. Even with the aerodactyl. I think like we said before, so like with this last one, ice cream's great on its own, the wine's great on its own. I probably wouldn't care for that donut or that wine on its own, but together, they were great. You're right. Yeah. So I would say that one was kind of- The pizza and the Nero d'Avola were really nice. Really good, right? Really good. Yeah. They complement each other really well. Nothing overshadowed the other one, which was nice. They just brought out flavors of each other and complementing each other. That's what it's about, right? Yeah, exactly. Because there's so many times where you pair food and wine and it kills one or the other, mostly the wine. So yeah, I thought these all went really well. Cool. Thank you for this. I'm actually going to a old world versus new world like wine pairing dinner tomorrow at a friend's house with people who are my quote unquote friends like my brother Jim. Yeah, he's dragging into that one. They invited me. Isn't your brother Jim our top listener? Yeah, maybe. The only guy on the Amazon that listens to it. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Jim. But anyway, so this is going to be fun. Now all throughout tomorrow, no matter what they come at me, I'm going to be like, yeah, it's no PX and vanilla ice cream, though. Then at the end of the day, you need to bring that out as the- Just plunk it down. You should. Absolutely. You can't just sit there and say it without them showing everyone up with it. It's true. Maybe I'll take that bottle and do it. Or you pony up and get your own. You know what? Emily, this was great. This was truly an inspired episode. This is really cool. Fun. Thank you so much for having me on. This has been really a fun time. You are welcome back anytime you bring ice cream. Thank you. Yeah, nice work. These are excellent pairings. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed that episode. It was a lot of fun to eat these things and drink these things. So you should try them at home. It's not hard. It's not hard at all. That's it. You open bottles and eat things and then drink the bottles. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Greg. I'm Alicia. I'm Roger. And I'm Emily. Keep tasting. All I can think of with these nachos is Gerald Ford saying, Do you like football? Do you like nachos? Would you like to come to my house and eat some nachos while watching football? Roger made a Simpsons reference today. No. The late Carvalho putting challenge. Oh, nice. You've selected Power Drive