phanaerozoic

Day 11 – “Reindeer Red” and Jalapeno Gouda

OK, there’s always room for a joke in a tasting event, right? This one is it. I mean, who would even try to pair a wine with jalapeno gouda? A hot pepper cheese begs for a cold Mexican cerveza with a lime wedge in the neck of the bottle. I mean, ok, a very generic “Reindeer Red” – a grape wine of indeterminate origin with unnamed sweet fruit flavors added (it tasted sort of like strawberry pop) did cut the heat of the peppers, but it was not a match made anywhere close to heaven…or even purgatory.

That inappropriate pairing brought to mind one of our Holiday trips back in the 1980s. We took a trip to Australia and New Zealand, leaving just before Thanksgiving and returning home the day before Christmas. Not a trip I would have the stamina for these days. It was marvelous: we hiked the Routebourne Trail in the New Zealand alps, spent time in Sydney and Melbourne Australia, and had a real fun trip. But seeing Christmas decorations and hearing those great accents made the whole thing seem surreal. All those folks getting ready to depart on their summer holiday trips over Christmas reinforced the idea that the world was upside down Down Under. Kind of like mixing jalapeno gouda and Reindeer Red wine.

~Roy Beckmeyer, 11 December, 2021