Judy and I received a last minute invite to a local wine club event called the “Tom Douglas Press Club” which was having a salmon and Pinot Noir pairing tasting. Once I heard what the pairings would be I was immediately interested. Prior to this night, I have not once hadPinot Noir and salmon paired together, not once I tell you! Turns out that I wouldn’t just explore but I also learned quite a bit about wines and salmon.
I will state this up front, I don’t like pinot noir with salmon. I’m not 100% sure why, but the pairing combinations just did nothing for me. This could come from the fact that I am no where near a good wine person and end up sticking with whites and reds general pairings (seafood vs meats). From what I can tell, this combination isn’t something that occurs very often and I applaud the club for stepping out of the box and trying something new. Although i wasn’t fond of the pairing, I was very fond of the information I learned about salmon and pinot noir.
The event gave me the ability to try steamed salmon from six different species. Chinook, Coho, Chum, Pink, Sockeye, and Steelhead. Out of those six the following are place in order of my liking: Chinook, Steelhead, and Sockeye. So let’s talk about the ones I didn’t like, Pink, Chum, and Coho for a brief second. They were all too dry (not overcooked, but taste wise) and had very strong fish flavors. Sure when you eat fish, you will have that flavor but those three seemed to really stand out as fish and might stand out very loudly as fish in dishes. The Chinook, Steelhead, and Sockeye had a very fluffy light texture and had hints of their natural flavor and not too much of it. These three would probably provide a very awesome base for any sauce due to their textures and not masking fish flavor.
So what about the Pinot Noir? Well we had eight different selections coming with 2 from: New Zealand, Oregon, France, and California. It was nice to be able to compare and contrast the different regions. Obviously France was superb and I expected no less at all, however Oregon played a very close second. I found it strange that I like Oregon over California but really their wines were not only priced well but delivered well also. Also interesting about Oregon, in 2007 they had a bit of a weather problem which caused some deviations in their quality. Nothing horrible but nothing amazing, then going up to 2009 they grew up into amazing! The nice tidbit I learned was if you find a 2007 buy it (cause it’s cheap) and store it for a few years, 2008 is a bit more but still not awesome, and 2009 is awesome (although the price is higher for such awesomeness).
June 14th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Glad you are posting again … it has been awhile!