Tasting Seminar: Sweet Wine and Savory Food Pairing
Most sweet wines are found at the end of a wine list -- or distributed on a separate menu -- only to be seen after we’ve eaten everything except dessert. What a shame! Sweet wines with sweet dessert is often not the ideal pairing; in fact, contrast is the better way to enjoy both the drink and the food!
In this tasting seminar and pairing course, Eric Danch will teach us how to drink like 17th century aristocrats. He will pull wines of different styles and levels of sweetness from Croatia, Austria and Hungary; he'll pair his selections with simple, savory foods like green onion pancakes, washed rind cheese, Indian curry and rice, and pork paté (we'll serve Tartine bread, too; to cleanse the palate, you know?).
At 15, Eric Danch started washing dishes at The Ranch House in Ojai, California. After 4 years, multiple titles, and nightly brown bag tastings with a sommelier with over 30 years experience, he became enamored with the story, culture, and community of wine. Moving to San Francisco in 2005 after two years living in Europe (Copenhagen & Rome), he found a job at Teatro Zinzanni, a 3-hour European cabaret meets Vaudevillian circus.
After 6 years he left the circus to start an internship with Crushpad, a pioneering San Francisco Custom Crush that makes over 700 small lot wines for people all over the world. In 2010, Eric worked harvest for a small Berkeley winery called “A Donkey and Goat,” and did everything from grape to bottle including making his own barrel. D&G was named one of the Top 5 Winemakers to Watch in 2011 by the SF Chronicle. Eric joined Blue Danube in the Spring of 2011.
As the gateway between East and West, Central Europe has been largely defined by invasion, occupation and alliances despite thousands of years of winemaking. Blue Danube Wine Company was founded in 2002 by husband and wife team Frank Dietrich and Zsuzsanna Molnar in order to travel to this unique corner of the world and bring its wine culture back to the US market. Focusing on Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and the Republic of Georgia, our goal is to seek out winemakers who truly capture the character of the land they come from. Indigenous grapes, winemaking traditions that predate Western Europe, and building meaningful long term relationships are the means to this end.
