The Chef’s Crash Course in Wine
Most chefs willingly admit to knowing less about wine than they’d like. Maria Helm Sinskey, culinary director of Robert Sinskey Vineyards, invites some of Seattle’s biggest talents to a crash course: She brings the wine; they bring the food.
The setting was Taste, a year-old restaurant in the Seattle Art Museum. Since the chefs were all curious about geeky winemaking terminology—“I really want to know what a winemaker means when he says his whites go through ‘malo,’ ” says Wilson—Sinskey made sure to demystify some of the jargon. After an overview of how grapes are grown and harvested, and how wine is fermented and aged, she talked about how to taste wine. Finally, she moved into a pairing lesson using wines from Italy, Spain and southern France to complement dishes the chefs had selected from their Mediterranean-influenced menus.
