There are more than 40 The Capital Grill restaurants in the U.S. We’ve only been to one, and it’s a class act. It has become our restaurant of choice when we’re going to dinner with people who want a steak-and-seafood evening with good wine.

If this is up your alley, The Capital Grille is offering the best wine tasting deal we know of:

Now through September 4th, for just $25 with dinner, you can have as much as you want of nine sparkling, white and red wines, including a Port-style dessert wine from Australia (charmingly called The Portly Gentleman). Known as the Generous Pour, if purchased by the bottle, the wine tab would be almost $800.

At a recent dinner, we opted in and tried all nine Generous Pour wines. We declare it the best $25 restaurant wine experience—as well as an enlightening, fun and delicious evening.

You can have your wines any way you want them, including pours of any and all nine wines and refills of your favorites.

Days later, we’re still enjoying the Generous
Pour experience at Capital Grille. Photo
courtesy Capital Grille.

We started the evening with a Marquis de la Tour Crémant de Loire, a lovely French sparkler that was the apéritif. We asked for more to go with the yummy pan-fried calamari with hot cherry peppers. The buttery St. Jean Belle Terre chardonnay went better with the lush lobster mac and cheese.

The ability to try so many wines with dinner—to compare and contrast—is a wonderful experience. Do you prefer the La Cana albariño or the St. Jean chardonnay with oysters on the half shell? Try it and decide (we preferred the albariño).

We had both whites, the Crémant and a Byron Bay pinot noir with our salmon—and confirmed that we continue to prefer pinot noir to white wine for pairing with salmon.

Those who ordered steak had five different reds to compare, both international and from California. We accepted “donations” of meat from their generous portions to try with the reds.

At this point we should have called it quits and let The Portly Gentleman suffice as dessert.

But no: We allowed ourselves to be seduced by the rich dessert menu (cheesecake, coconut cream pie, crème brûlée, flourless chocolate espresso cake and some lighter temptations).

A wine pairing dinner is a wonderful way to spend an evening with friends or colleagues, sharing good food and wine adventures. The wine selection was specially chosen by Master Sommelier George Miliotes to complement both the menu and the season.

You can send someone a gift card to the Capital Grille. What a great gift (hint, hint)!

Trivia napkins break the ice or stump your
friends. Photo by Jaclyn Nussbaum | THE NIBBLE.

If your party guests don’t know each other, breaking the ice can be the first order of the day.

Trivia Party Starters prints cocktail napkins that entertain your guests and get them to interact.

We chose Beer and Wine versions, but there are 12 subject categories that include Baby Shower, Celebrity, Christmas, Comedy Movie, Sports and TV Sitcom, among others.

While they’re a bit pricey, at $5.99 Canadian/$6.23 U.S. for 20 napkins and 40 different questions—two questions per napkin—you only need one pack to get the party started.

You can also make a game out of it, playing “Napkin Trivial Pursuit.” The person who collects the most napkins wins…a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer.

Check ‘em out at Trivia Party Starters.com.

P.S. What vitamins does beer contain?

Answer: All of the important B vitamins, plus vitamins A, D and E. More about beer nutrition.

This week we attended a trade event called Riesling & Co. World Tour 2011, sponsored by GermanWineUSA.com, a trade association that aims to heighten awareness of the quality and special nature of German wines.

At most wine tastings, there’s a selection of cheeses, breads and other foods to go with the wine. At this Riesling tasting, the only food served was sushi—plus dumplings and spring rolls targeted to those who don’t eat sushi.

It was a perfect pairing. Those who don’t drink beer or saké have a winner in a Riesling, part of a quintet of other white wines that includes crisp, high-acid Riesling and Pinot Blanc, spicy and aromatic Gewürztraminer and Viognier. Champagne and other sparklers go well, too.

Riesling, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Blanc are grown in both the Alsace region of France and in Germany. Viognier is largely Alsatian, but Germany has been amping up its production. All four varieties are grown in California, where they are known as “the Rhone clones.”

Riesling is the wine to pair with sushi.
Photo by Lognetic | Dreamstime.

While wines from the same grape variety taste different based on where they were grown, each region produces delicious wines. It’s a question of finding which producers you prefer.

The New Riesling
Rieslings have changed substantially over the last 20 years. In an effort to gain more fans worldwide, vintners have moved away from the traditional style of Riesling with its notes of petrol and flowery, sometimes heady aromas. Today, the wines are made to be food-friendly across a rainbow of cuisines. The crispness and acidity are just right for sushi.

Riesling is vinified into six categories, in order of increasing sugar levels based on the ripeness of the grapes when picked. Don’t let the word “sugar” scare you away: The slight sweetness in Kabinett and Spätlase wines goes very well with sushi.

Kabinett Rieslings, with the lowest sugar levels, are the best place to start.

Nikos Mediterranean feta, flavored with basil,
garlic, oregano and other spices, plus tomato.
Photo by Claire Freierman | THE NIBBLE.

If your experience with feta cheese is limited to Greek salads or a pita pocket, branch out: There are many ways to enjoy this tangy cheese.

As we were looking at recipes* on the website of Nikos brand feta, we were inspired by the suggested wine pairings.

*Feta and Roasted Eggplant Terrine, Feta Cheese Beggars Pouches, Feta Cheese with White Bean Hummus and more.

Nikos recommends these pairings to enhance the flavor of feta:

 
Feta is Greece’s most famous cheese: a pure white, aged curd cheese that crumbles easily. While the cheese has been made since antiquity, the name came into the Greek language in the 17th century, from the Italian word fetta, meaning slice. The name refers to slicing the cheese from the brick.

Authentic feta is a sheep’s milk cheese, or a mixture of sheep’s and goat’s milks. Outside of the EU, where the recipe is protected by law, it can also be made of cow’s milk.

Feta is formed into bricks and salted and cured for several months in a brine solution. The cheese is semi-hard, with a flavor that can range from mild and milky to salty with a very tangy acidity.

Watch out: cheaper brands of feta can be inedibly salty. If you purchase a brand that turns out to be too salty, soaked the cheese in water or milk to remove some of the saltiness.

Visit the Nikos website by April 30, 2011 for a chance to win a Mediterranean cruise.

What wine or other alcoholic libation goes with chocolate?

That depends: Is it bittersweet, milk chocolate, fruit-filled, mint-filled, with nuts and so forth.

Check out our Chocolate And Wine Pairings chart.

What if you’re having cheesecake, chocolate cake, tiramisu or other favorite dessert?

That requires new options entirely!

See our Wine And Dessert Pairings chart.

All of us at THE NIBBLE wish you

A SWEET & HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.

What wine goes with chocolates or chocolate
cake? It’s not a simple question, but we’ve
got the answers. Photo courtesy Tellurlide
Truffle.

Some wine lovers have an allergy that produces flushing, headaches, hives, rashes and more.

Traditional advice is to avoid sulfites, which are added to many wines as a preservative (to prevent bacterial growth). People with sulfite sensitivity comprise perhaps .2% of the population.

Given this tiny number, if you develop symptoms from drinking wine, it may not be due to sulfites.

Leonard Phillips, owner of Ambassador Wines & Spirits in New York City, was a biochemist before he joined the family wine business. Given the minute percentage of sulfite-sensitive people, he believes that many allergic reactions are due to the tannins in the wood barrels that the wine is aged in.

Tannins give wines a “backbone“—required for a well-structured wine. Too many tannins create a “puckery,” dry or astringent sensation when drinking red wines.

While tannin exists in the skin and stems of grapes, which are crushed to create the juice that is fermented into wine, the bigger culprit, says Phillips, is the oak tannin in wine barrels.

Avoid wines fermented and/or aged in
wood. Libbey wine glasses.

Wines fermented and/or aged in wood barrels extract tannins, sugars and flavors from the wood. It’s a desirable thing, unless you’re sensitive to the tannins.

If you have “wine allergy” symptoms, here’s how to test if you’re sensitive:

1. Consult with your wine store clerk and purchase a wine that “never touches wood.” A large number of wines are fermented and aged in steel tanks instead of wood barrels.
2. If you can enjoy that wine symptom-free, then try a wine that is fermented in steel and aged in used oak barrels. These are barrels that are 2-3 years old. The majority of the tannins leach into the wine the first year they were used. Try to find a European wine or a domestic one that uses French oak. French oak is milder than American oak. Without getting into advanced chemistry, you may be able to better tolerate French oak tannins.
3. If you have no reaction to used oak barrels, try a wine aged in new French oak.
4. Survived again? The last test is to try a wine aged in American oak (or oak from another country.)

This test will help you eliminate wood tannins you may be allergic to. An allergist can help you rule out sulfur allergies.

The best way to pack wine in luggage.
Photo courtesy JetBag.com.

Are you leaving on a jet plane to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas? Post-9/11 security regulations prohibiting liquids have certainly plagued wine lovers.

But some people care about bringing (or taking home) a special bottle of wine so much, they’ll actually check it in luggage.

“Oh, we just roll the bottles up in our clothing,” and place them in the suitcase, we’ve been told by more than a few friends. We shake our head, remembering a bubble-wrapped bottle of Sauternes that leaked through the cork and the foil and soaked everything in our luggage (and scented the inside of the suitcase for a year).

Among all the options we have now to prevent this from happening, the leakproof Jet Bag seems the most convenient.

A bio-degradable carrier with a reusable zip seal closure, the Jet Bag completely secures your liquids. The material pads & protects your bottle and if it cracks, a baby diaper-type absorbent lining wicks up the liquid.

It can also be used to protect olive oil, vinegar, perfume and other liquids.

Purchase online at TheJetBag.com. Three Jet Bags are $15; larger quantities are available if you want to give them as stocking stuffers.

Woodbridge Brut is creamy, yeasty and
citrussy with a touch of sweetness that
enables it to be paired with desserts as well
as savory foods—including the Thanksgiving
turkey. Photo courtesy Robert Mondavi.

Holiday celebrations often mean a bottle of bubbly, including Champagne, which is made only in the Champagne region of northeast France. Every other wine that bubbles is called “sparkling wine.”

Champagne has an international fan base for its complex, toasty, yeasty wines. Champagnes have distinctive flavors, unique due to the layers of chalk underneath the region’s soil.* Since there’s a limited amount that can be produced each year on 75,000 acres, the price is accordingly high. The least expensive bottle is around $25.00.

Unless your crowd is full of wine connoisseurs, you can have just as pleasant an experience with other sparkling wines for a third to half of the price of the least expensive bottle of Champagne. Other sparklers at $8.00 to $12.00 a bottle are very satisfying glasses of wine. When mixed into a cocktail, only experts can tell the difference. The complex flavors of pricey Champagne are up covered by mixers, so why overspend?

(Our favorite Champagne/sparkling wine cocktail is a Kir Royale, combining the wine with creme de cassis, blackcurrant liqueur. You can use raspberry, peach or other mixers. Learn more.)

Here are sparkling wine varieties to look for that are $8.00 to $15.00/bottle (prices will vary by retailer):

HISTORICAL NOTE ABOUT CHAMPAGNE
The region now called Champagne was settled by the Gauls around 500 B.C.E. When the Roman legions conquered the area in 56 B.C.E., they bestowed upon the land the name Campania (Champagne) because of the similarity between the rolling hills of that area with the Roman (now Italian) province of Campania (the word campania itself means “open country”). In the Middle Ages Champagne was a duchy, then a country. In 1284, Champagne was brought under French rule when Jeanne, Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne, Brie and Bigorre married the future King Philippe IV (she was 11 years old). When Philippe’s father died the following year, Jeanne became Queen of France at age 12.

*The best grapes are grown where a Tertiary period chalk plain overlaps a vast Cretaceous chalk plain that lies underneath the soil layer (it’s the same huge basin that creates the White Cliffs of Dover in England). The chalk provides good drainage and reflects the heat from the sun.

Martini & Rossi Sparkling Rosé wine, which is supporting The Pink Agenda and its breast cancer awareness efforts to raise money for research, has sponsored three lovely prizes for NIBBLE readers: a special edition “Think Pink” 100% silk scarf.

Created specifically for The Pink Agenda’s fundraising, this limited-edition scarf has a dotted pattern that represents the bubbles in the Sparkling Rose wine. Estimated value (the scarf is not available for retail purchase): $40.00.

A startling 1 in 8 American women develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetimes. In 2010, an estimated 207,090 new cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. alone.

That’s reason enough to want to do something—even something small. To this end, Martini & Rossi will match your $5 donations made through the end of October. You can donate most easily via Facebook. Or, look for more information and details in local wine and liquor stores where Martini Sparkling Rose is sold.

Show your support with a small donation and
a stylish pink silk scarf. Photo by Leah
Hansen | The Nibble.

Complex wine demands simple food.
Photo by Michal Szydlowski | SXC.

If you’re tempted to cook a fabulous meal to enjoy a great bottle of wine, remember the formula:

Complex wines demand simple food. You want the wine to be the focus of attention, not a dazzling dish of food.

Grilled steak, roast beef or lamb for a great red wine do the trick; as does grilled seafood or fish for a white wine.

Use subtle herbs and spices on the vegetables; avoid heavy sauces. Dress vegetables simply: This isn’t the time for your famous Roquefort sauce.

Simple cooking also gives you what you want most: the time to relax and enjoy that bottle of wine!