71 Wines in Three Days - Day Two!

This is the second installment of my 71 Wines in Three Days post…if you haven’t read Part One yet, check it out here.

The day began bright and early for breakfast. I think it’s fair to say that after trying 28 wines the day before, many of us were hurting a bit.  And what better way to get over the pain than a nice, big Mexican Ranchero breakfast that I will never forget.  We were all invited into the kitchen where we were given Mexican hot chocolate which included a shot of tequila mixed in (sounds insane but it worked and tasted amazing). 

Nothing says ‘hangover cure’ like a bit of tequila at 9am!  

Chef Charlie Palmer invited everyone to make themselves at home, grab a plate and basically go station to station filling up our plates with what was the best breakfast I have ever had.  One of the kitchen staff even had their Mom hand making tortillas and stuffing them with a spicy shredded chicken.  Add to that Huevos Rancheros (with Executive Sous Chef Lupe Avila’s own ranchero sauce), Chilaquiles (my fav of the morning), churros and so much more – I was in heaven.  Of course, we were also given glasses of Pol Roger Brut Champagne.  It was an awesome experience to get a behind the scenes look at the kitchen of a Michelin Star restaurant.

Fresh tamales anyone?

Wine count so far: 29

After a nap, we headed down to lunch which was Spanish Tapas.  The cool part about this session was that we were taught how to blend the wines of Priorat from Michael Mondavi.  Aside from the wine blending and sampling, one of my favorite parts of this meal was the Serrano ham that they shaved off the ham hock right in the dining room.  It was simply outstanding.  

Best Serrano ham I've ever had!

We tried another six wines during this meal, five being 100% unblended wines that we used to make our own blends.  I quite liked the Carignan and I’m afraid I used a fair bit of that for sampling instead of blending.   What I thought was very cool about this afternoon aside from the food and the wine, is the fact that Michael Mondavi took the time to come around to every table and talk with each of us about wine, share family anecdotes and he was just a friendly and amazing story teller. 

Takes me back to high school chemistry, minus the alcohol of course!

Wine count so far: 35

After another rest after lunch, we got ready for dinner.  There was much buzz leading up to that night's meal and it was not unwarranted.  The theme this evening was a Spanish Alta Cocina Dinner and included seven courses paired with a total of 21 wines! 

Click on the image to enlarge and see the menu

All of the courses were amazing, but I particularly enjoyed the paella and not just because it tasted so good, but because they cooked it outside over an open flame.  I snuck out during dinner and spent some time with Executive Chef Vincent Pouessel and talked charcoal and wood fire cooking.  Chef Pouessel likes to use mesquite wood because he likes the smell and also because it burns evenly with very little of the popping and crackling you get from some other woods.  Kudos to Executive Chef Pouessel and Executive Sous Chef Lupe Avila who worked the fire and cooked the paella outside, in Las Vegas, in the summer… suffice to say I think it was hotter outside than it was in the kitchen!  And you could really taste the smokiness in the result, something that would have been lacking had they cooked it in the kitchen without the open wood fire.

Paella cooked over a mesquite fire

Wine count so far: 56

Stay tuned for Part 3 which involves a bouillabaisse breakfast (!?!?), a Swiss fondue, grilled ribs and of course – more wine!

Goosebump Inducing Pulled Pork!

If you've read the 'about me' section on this page, you're about to see that this was pretty much the most perfect 48 hours of my life this year thus far.  I had just returned from a 7 hour motorcycle ride from Vermont when my wife Kelly showed me the 6lb pork butt she purchased for me.  Nothing says love like pork butt.  A friend of mine suggested a recipe from The Grill Smith and it proved to be outstanding.  Kelly prepared the rub and then I went to work on rubbing the crap out of the butt (not exactly how I meant that to sound but you get the idea). 

We let the butt sit for a while and stopped for a beer having worked so hard thus far.  Next up was prepping the grill as this was going to be a LONG overnight low and slow smoke.  Being new to the charcoal grill, I checked out a number of links online and settled on this site for guidance.  I didn’t go to the extreme he suggests with separating my charcoal lumps and it still worked fine but followed his general guidance overall.  What I basically learned from reading his tips though, was that I should really figure out how to set and MAINTAIN the proper temperature before I throw the butt on.  So at about 8:30pm, I fired up the grill and over the next 2 hours, I fiddled with the top and bottom vents to make sure I was able to keep the temp at 225 F. 

At 10:30pm, I threw the butt on the grill and after another hour of temperature watching (and confidence building) we went to bed. Now like any good man dreaming of butt ;) I woke several times throughout the night and went outside in my skivvies to check the temperature making the odd tiny adjustment to the vents when needed. 

By around 2pm on Friday July 1^st, the interior temp of the meat hit 195 F and it was ready to come off the grill.  I wrapped my butt in tin foil and put it in a cooler for a few hours.  That time period is crucial as it continues to break down so that the meat just falls off the bone later when you fork the butt ;) to pull it from the meat (sorry for the 80 sexual innuendoes, but there’s just so many opportunities to do so when dealing with pork butt - and yes, I know, the pork 'butt' is actually from the shoulder).

Supper that evening was pulled pork sandwiches with Kelly having prepared an outstanding sauce to top the meat.  We enjoyed with a nice bold bottle of red wine which just made it even more enjoyable. The smoky flavor came through in the pork in such a way that when I brought some in to work the following week, a friend actually got goosebumps while eating it saying it was so amazing.*

*Disclaimer – Rob does have diabetes and there was a lot of sugar in the BBQ sauce Kel made, so it’s entirely possible the goosebumps were not a result of my pulled pork, but hey, he still said it was outstanding.

So, check out the loads of pulled pork recipes online or contact The Grill Smith  for his recipe and get grilling.  This was my first attempt at a low and slow smoke and if I can give goosebumps to a diabetic – dammit, so can you!

Get grilling!  What’s the worst that could happen? ;)