{"id":8450,"date":"2012-01-06T06:43:24","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T12:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=8450"},"modified":"2012-11-02T11:09:13","modified_gmt":"2012-11-02T17:09:13","slug":"session-59-with-a-little-help-from-his-winemaking-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/session-59-with-a-little-help-from-his-winemaking-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Session #59: With a little help from his winemaking friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheFor The Session #59, host Mario Rubio provides<\/a> these marching orders: “Let\u2019s talk about what we drink when not drinking beer.” Alan doesn’t approve<\/a>, and — to be honest — I’m feeling challenged.<\/p>\n

We do drink other stuff<\/em> in our house. We had Tom & Jerry’s when we decorated our tree, enjoyed homemade eggnog on Christmas, chatted at length over a wonderful bottle of Italian wine a few nights ago. But those aren’t things I’m keen on writing about.<\/p>\n

When The Session<\/em> began nearly five years ago<\/a> the premise was pretty basic. Pick a theme, write about it, maybe focus on a specific beer. Not sure how to do that with eggnog.<\/p>\n

\"MattSo let’s talk beer, pretending this one qualifies because winemakers played a major role in creating it. Firestone Walker XV. Which — like for X, XI, XII, XIII and XIV — a bunch of otherwise grape-oriented guys help blend. I wrote about X for Imbibe<\/em> magazine, and a some of the others here. Most notably XI,<\/a> with more fawning<\/a> here.<\/p>\n

Now that I’ve stocked up on XV I’ll fess up. It might be as good as XI. Of course, this is totally my palate talking. You might not agree<\/a> at all. I’ll let you know how the two compare in a couple of years, assuming I can actually stand open that last bottle of XI. Looking at the blend for XV — 76% barley wines, no dominant anchor<\/em>, Double Jack (fueled by dry hop aromas that are bound to fade) — I wasn’t all that optimistic. But there’s already deep dark character beyond the rich fruitiness that’s downright beguiling. And hints there’ll be something different next year, then something altogether different the next.<\/p>\n

Fifteen Paso Robles area winemakers showed up this year to contribute their opinions about the blend — or perhaps simply to drink beer — and Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson set them off in groups of two and three. Each group came up with a favorite mixture, brewery workers replicated the blends and the winemakers voted to determine their favorite.<\/p>\n

Brynildson now has 600 barrels to draw from, and emptied almost 200 for XV. I’m pretty sure that means there’s going to be a XVI and that plenty of winemakers will show up to help. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For The Session #59, host Mario Rubio provides these marching orders: “Let\u2019s talk about what we drink when not drinking beer.” Alan doesn’t approve, and — to be honest — I’m feeling challenged. We do drink other stuff in our house. We had Tom & Jerry’s when we decorated our tree, enjoyed homemade eggnog on … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[204,322],"class_list":["post-8450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-session","tag-firestone-walker","tag-matt-brynildson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-2ci","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8450"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10299,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8450\/revisions\/10299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}