POSTCARDS FROM FORT THOMAS

Our resident teacher/wine consultant, Corey Bogdan, who can be found at our Fort Thomas store has a great little entry to our blogospere concerning wine pairing for my favorite food - Sushi.

"I adore sushi. I loathe sake. I fully acknowledge that the two are supposed to go hand-in-hand, like wings and beer. However, even the mere sniff of that fermented rice juice will instantly turn my stomach. Long story short, in college my roommate and I bought a magnum of sake because it had a really cool label of a dragon on it, and the whole event turned into an awful experience. But hey, we've all been there. Most of us have at least one type of alcohol that we, at some point in time, have had a bad experience with and just cannot ever go back.

In fact, it is only a recent notion to me to enjoy sushi. I admit, I was full of trepidation when approaching sushi. Raw fish was a dice roll that I was not willing to take. What turned me around was making it for myself. My lovely wife (though at the time she was only my lovely girlfriend) and I took an International Cooking class at Scarlet Oaks. Both of us were fair cooks in the kitchen, but wanted a) some new techniques to learn, and b) a change in our rather mundane life at the time. During one of the classes we learned to roll our own sushi. Instantly I was convert, because for the first time with sushi, I could control every aspect of what went into my roll. If I felt squeamish about an ingredient, I simply omitted it. By placing the control in my hands (literally), I was now able to move past my stubbornness.

So I've been eating sushi for a few years now, but still haven't found that perfect liquid partner. That is, until I recently discovered the Silvaner grape. I brought home a bottle of our Gysler Silvaner Halbtrocken 2007. Allow me to pontificate this bottle's merits...first of all, it's only $9.49. Second of all - and here is a serious bonus - this bottle is a liter! That's right, you get one-third more wine than your normal bottle! This will even allow you to easily share a bottle with a significant other. Third, this wine very clean, crisp, refreshing, and overall a perfect match for any light seafood. It allowed me to enjoy the subtleties of the sushi, and I will say it even enhanced them. This bottle would even be perfect by itself on a hot summer day. So pick up a bottle, whether you enjoy seafood or not, and experience a grape worth trying/revisiting."