View the recipe here!

Saltimbocca is a dish traditionally made with veal, although it can be done with pork, chicken or even turkey. It’s super simple and super fast to make and it’s always a crowd pleasure.

Think about it: prosciutto, pork tenderloin, fresh sage leaves – all sauteed in a pan and topped with a creamy beurre blanc sauce made with our ACADÉMIE White Wine Blend #2. What could be better?? We chose Blend #2 because the bright citrus and lemon/lime notes brighten up the pork and prosciutto nicely.

This recipe is certainly one of the “classics” to keep in your repertoire – check out the recipe by clicking on the link below!

View Pork Saltimbocca Recipe!

We are proud to announce the up and coming ACADÉMIE Cooking Channel, coming soon to a You Tube player near you! On our show, we will explore the various aspects of cooking with wine, and what you can expect from different wines in your cooking. We’ll also visit producers and retailers of various gourmet products to learn more about how quality ingredients can improve the flavor of your culinary creations. One of our first shows will feature a visit to a local hand-crafted butter producer for our special on beurre blanc sauces. We’ll also be talking with a butcher about the various cuts and types of meat you can select for different types of recipes.

Stay tuned, our first episode will be here shortly!

Well fear not, friend. It can be fixed! In this blog post, we’ll outline a few strategies for “fixing” flavors that may be a bit out of balance in your dish.

It’s too sour or tart

Sour and tart qualities can be very nice, especially in balance. However, when cooking with wine, the acidity can be a challenge because as the liquid evaporates with heat, the acidity will concentrate and become stronger. Couple this with other “sour” ingredients like citrus or vinegar, and it might make the sour component too much in your dish.

You can solve this by adding sweet or protein laden ingredients. Sweetness will balance sour, regardless of whether you have wine in your dish. Think sugar or honey. A famous example of this is “Sweet & Sour Pork”, which uses vinegar and sugary flavors to balance the dish.

If your sourness is coming from wine, keep in mind that proteins will also neutralize lots of the sourness and acidity without adding the sweet (but you’ll get other flavors depending on the source of the proteins). You can get proteins from glaces, stocks, creme or butter (a huge component of buerre blanc sauces). Keep in mind that proteins will add other flavors as well, so make sure you keep the big picture in mind.

Yikes! It’s too sweet

This is the opposite problem of above, but with the same solution. If you’re dish is too sweet, add sour! A spritz of lemon juice, vinegar or wine will help balance the sweetness (but be careful when adding wine – as you probably don’t want the alcohol with it. A quick reduction in a sauce pan will solve this problem as you will boil out the alcohol). Saltiness can also balance sweetness by adding a savory component to the mix (which can be very pleasant, but don’t over-do it. Too much salt can destroy a dish, and it’s a nearly impossible problem to fix).

Borrrring! This dish is too bland!

Experiment with a pinch of salt, sugar or sour (vinegar, wine, citrus). These can sometimes add the little extra your dish needs to make it more interesting.

It’s too bitter

Fats and/or a bit of sweetness can help smooth bitter components in a dish. Think sugar and cream in bitter black coffee, for example. Salt can also help with bitterness (but again, use in moderation).

Conclusion:

Making great food is a personal thing…you have the final say on your culinary creation and you have the ability to take the flavors in whichever direction you choose. Have fun. Experiment. If the flavors get off track, use the tips above to get back on the main path.

Bon appetit!

So…if the flavor of your wine matters, then the flavor of your wine *matters*, right? Pinot Noir tastes very different from Cabernet, which tastes very different from Merlot. And when you cook with wine, the water and alcohol evaporate, concentrating these differences and making them more pronounced. Even if you knew the varietal you like, the problem isn’t solved. Take Chardonnay, for example. It can be oaky, or buttery, or green apple-like, or acidic. And each of these Chardonnay “types” will have a different flavor in your meal.

You can’t simply cook with a generic “dry red wine” or “dry white wine” for your meal (or rather, you probably shouldn’t) any more than you can add “spice” to your recipe. As with any ingredient, you want consistency and appropriateness of flavor.

ACADÉMIE wines are authentic dry wines perfectly blended and balanced for your cooking. We source wines from Napa, Lodi & Sonoma and blend them according to profiles we’ve developed with chefs. Each wine is unique and distinct, and does very targeted things in your everyday gourmet cooking.

Don’t forget to taste our wines before you cook with them (Buyer beware: they are very tasty. Try not to drink the whole bottle). Think about the flavors they will impart to your cooking.

Because after all, if flavor matters, then flavor matters, right?

The following sauce is an all time favorite of mine – and it’s one of the easiest things I’ve ever cooked: Wine reduction + butter + thyme.

First: What’s a wine reduction?

A reduction is the result of simmering your wine and letting the water and alcohol evaporate – which amplifies the flavors in your final “reduction” (all the goodness left in the sauce pan).

Second: Which wine?

For this reduction, we’ve chosen our Blend #1, a dry red wine blend (with a large Pinot Noir component) because it’s earthy, oaky nature is very complimentary to the only spice we use in the sauce: Thyme. As the sauce reduces, the spice notes of the wine itself get stronger and sharper. This harmonizes perfectly with the earthy and grassy components of the Thyme.

Lastly: Let’s get cooking!

• Pour 1/3 cup of our Blend #1 into a sauce pan and crank up the heat.
• Throw your chicken breast fillets on the grill (I love the George Foreman Grill because it’s so darned fast and easy to clean up).
• You may want to start some rice too, to serve as a side.
• The wine should be simmering now. You’ll want it to simmer until about half of it has evaporated. If in doubt, you can *carefully* pour the liquid into a measuring cup to see how much has evaporated so far.
• Once there, toss in 3-4 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Most butter sticks have a little measuring guide on the wrapper. Simply cut according to the measured out lines. Add to wine. Stir until thoroughly melted.
• Now sprinkle in some thyme to taste and you’re there, baby!

Your chicken breasts should be done now. Pop them on a plate, spoon over your wine sauce and BAM!

So easy, yeah?

Seriously, it doesn’t get much easier than this for a gourmet meal. And you get all the health benefits of wine (and the flavor benefits of *right* wine, at that). Also, you boiled out the alcohol in the wine as you simmered it, so there’s no problems there (alcohol boils at around 175F and water boils at 212F).

There you have it, chef. Nice work. Bon appetit!

Here are a few ingredients from each category to illustrate the four categories:

Sour:

vinegar, dry wine, sour cream, yogurt, tamarind, mustard, pickles, lemon juice, lemongrass, mustard

Great butter/beurre blanc sauce:
ACADÉMIE Wine Blend #2 + lemon juice + butter + salt. Butter balances out the sourness of the sauce and adds volume and body.

Salty:

fish sauce, soy sauce, mustard, capers, olives, anchovies, bacon, prosciutto, aged cheeses

Awesome teriyaki sauce:
ACADÉMIE Wine Blend #3 + soy sauce + garlic. Saltiness of the soy sauce is balanced by savory components of reduced wine and garlic.

Bitter:

cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, grapefruit, coffee, oaked wine, watercress, radicchio, endive, mustard greens, black pepper, walnuts, dark chocolate

Excellent reduction sauce for chicken breast:
ACADÉMIE Wine Blend #1 + thyme + butter. Earthiness of thyme is balanced by bitter oak and fruit components of the wine. Butter adds volume and melds flavors together.

Sweet:

sugar, chocolate, ketchup, roasted bell peppers, caramelized onions, molasses, melon, fruit juice, sweet wine, honey

Great fish or pork marinade:
ACADÉMIE Wine Blend #4 + cane sugar + coriander + ginger + dill weed. Sweetness of wine/sugar balanced by fruited aromatics and fresh summer spices.

Umami:

portabello, shiitake, porcini, and morel mushrooms, corn, smoked or cured fish, shellfish, soy sauce, miso

Tasty mushroom finishing sauce:
ACADÉMIE Wine Blend #3 + brown sugar + paprika + portabello mushrooms. Sticky sweet components balanced by umami from mushrooms.

Conclusion:

By keeping in mind like flavors, you can craft recipes (or build upon existing recipes) in a harmonious way.

One of the interesting things about cooking with wine is that it can easily support and add something special to ingredients in each of these different categories. Experiment. Have fun. Enjoy the fruits of your labor with your loved ones!

Sources:
Cooking Light, March 2008

But where do these flavors come from? How do different wines end up having different flavors?

Essentially, wine gets its flavors from three different areas: Terroir, Grape Varietal and Winemaking Decisions.

Let’s explore each of these in a bit more depth.

Terroir

This is everything about where the grapes grow, including soil, climate and farming practices. You’ll find wines from certain regions end up having distinct flavors. A famous example of this are qualities such as “minerality” in a wine.

Varietal

Unlike terroir, however, the grape varietal of your wine will have a big impact on the flavors in your meal. Different grapes have different flavors/qualities and they also behave differently in fermentation. For example, Muscat grapes can be sweet, low acid, intensely aromatic and hearty. Cabernet grapes can be thick, drying and rich. Sauvingnon Blanc grapes can be lemony, acidic, crisp and sharp. And these differences will have a direct impact on the flavors wine imparts in your cooking.

Winemaking Decisions

The decisions made when making the wine also have a huge impact on the flavors imparted when cooking with a wine. Here, the winemaker decides things like which yeast or which malolactic strain she will choose to ferment her wine (the yeast is what turns the sugar into alcohol and the malolactic strain is what gives Chardonnay its “buttery” qualities). She also decides things like how long to leave the grape skins in contact with the fermenting juice (determining flavor intensity and color), how much sweetness the wine will have, whether she will age the wine in oak barrels (another huge flavor changer) and a whole host of other decisions about the wine’s final flavors.

This is why you can’t just simply choose a “Cabernet” or a “Chardonnay” to cook with. Each winemaker’s take on how a wine should be can be dramatically different. Chardonnays can be oaky, or crisp and acidic, or fat and buttery. Cabernets can be heavily oaked, or tannic/drying, or acidic – or they can be restrained and soft, sweet and round.

Conclusion:

You just never know how an individual wine will taste. And this is why ACADEMIE wines are such a great choice for your cooking. Unless you’ve tasted every dry red wine on the shelf, it’s hard to know which will have the most complementary flavors for your meal. Our wines are blended and balanced with quality wines sourced from California’s premier wine regions specifically for your cooking. As you cook with our wines, pour yourself a glass and think of the flavors our wines lend to your cooking. After all, you should never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink. And with ACADEMIE, it’s never been easier to do just that!

It’s a tricky question because the meaning of “bad” is different for different people.

In this blog post, we’ll break the answer down into a few easily understandable components which should make the answer more clear.

Bad generally means three things, 1) Loss of aromatics/flavor, 2) Oxidation or staling, 3) Wine spoilage.

Let’s dig into each of these one by one:

1) Loss of aromatics/flavor

Once you open a bottle of wine, you expose it to oxygen – wine’s mortal enemy. Of course, in moderation, oxygen is a good thing. Corks actually let oxygen into your wine at a *very* slow rate, allowing your wine to mature and develop complexity over time. But once you pop the cork, your wine is subjected to an onslaught of oxygen.

Check the label on your wine bottle. You’ll see a big notice that says “contains sulfites”. All wine labels have to say this by law because all wine has sulfites naturally. When this sulfite level is at a “healthy” level, your wine is in a sense insured against oxidation and spoilage. Not only does a correct sulfite level prevent bacteria from living in your wine, it also prevents oxidation. Every time oxygen comes in contact with your wine, it “binds up” a bit of the sulfites, dropping the level slightly. Within a short time of your wine being open, all sulfites will be bound up, which means that your wine is no longer “protected”. This can happen within an hour or less.

At this point, the oxygen starts to oxidize your wine and the wine’s aromatics and flavor start to reduce dramatically. This is the first step of your wine “going bad”. All these flavors and aromatics are what make your wine so nice to begin with. If you leave a wine out for a day or two exposed to oxygen, you’ll come back to it and notice that it’s a shell of its former glorious self. But the wine may not be considered stale yet. That will take a few more days.

2) Oxidation or staling

Oxidation has arrived when your wine has lost the majority of aromatics and now starts to develop “stale” flavors. These are noted by sherry or raisin-like qualities, or even squash or pumpkin notes. They are generally not all that pleasant.

At this point, you’re going down the path of truly “bad” wine. The next stop is spoilage.

3) Wine Spoilage

Because your sulfite level is no longer protecting your wine, anything floating around in the air can “infect” your wine. You really can’t prevent it. If your wine is left out and exposed to oxygen, at some point it will start to spoil. It will start to develop very harsh and unpleasant flavors. This is the process vinegar goes through, but vinegar is made by injecting certain strains of bacteria into wine to get certain qualities. You probably won’t do this though, so you’re stuck with wild yeasts and bacteria from the air, so generally your spoiled wine won’t be too pleasant.

This is the last stop in your wine spoilage and will happen within a few weeks at room temperature.

How to avoid this:

1) One of the best ways to keep your wine from going bad is to use it quickly. ACADÉMIE wine bottles are smaller than a normal wine bottle (375ml instead of 750ml like a traditional wine bottle). This means two things: First, you’ll use the wine more quickly. You can generally get between 2-6 meals out of one of our wine bottles, depending on how much you use at a time. At this rate, your wine won’t have time to go stale because you’ll have already used it all.

Next, less air can “live” in the headspace of a smaller wine bottle. If you use half of a full size wine bottle, you’ve doubled the amount of oxygen in the headspace. ACADÉMIE’s smaller bottles lessen the staling potential of your wine.

2) Another great way to prevent staling of wine is to get it in the fridge ASAP. As soon as you open your wine, use it and get it cold. This dramatically reduces the rate at which wine goes bad. One common problem with regular wine bottles is that they are too big to fit into your fridge, especially with the cork poking out. ACADÉMIE’s smaller wine bottles are much shorter than a normal wine bottle and usually fit in the fridge door.

3) There are tools out there that can prevent staling and are pretty darn cheap when you consider how much wine they “save”. Vacuvin creates a hand-pump vacuum that sucks out air in a bottle’s head space with a special stopper.

You can check it out here: Vacu Vin Concerto 3-Piece Wine Saver Set with 4 Stoppers

Conclusion:

And there you have it folks. Wine will go “bad” within hours or days, but will truly taste “bad” within weeks. You can slow this process down by getting your wine in the fridge as soon as it’s opened.