Perfect Pairings: Dessert Wine and Cookies

Hi guys, I'm Jordan Salcito. And I'm Heather Bertinetti for eHow.com. So here I have peanut butter cookies and palmiers that I've made. Can you suggest a wine that would go with baked items just like chocolate free like a cookie? Absolutely, so I think there are a lot of options but one of my absolute favorites is a super versatile wine called Tokai from the Tokai region in Hungary. So this is one of my favorite bottles of Tokai. This says right here on it, five putonios. You always want to look out for the number of putonios. It will range between one and six and the higher the number of putonios, the sweeter the wine is. So one of the reasons why i love Takai with cookies like the palmiers and the peanut butter is because of the way that this wine is made. So naturally in the vineyards what happens is the grapes are affected by botrytis or noble rot and what that does is it adds a sort of caramely flavor to the actual grapes s the botrytis sort of attacks the grape skin, the water evaporates, it concentrates the sugar, the acidity and adds this richness, this textural richness or glycerol so anyway, so you have this great creamy texture and I think that that's important when you're talking about something with a great sort of texture and full body like a peanut butter cookie or a palmier. Right, they're so high in fat and there's so much butter in the cookies, it makes sense. Cheers. Wow, that's got a lot of complexity to it too. Now Jordan in the restaurant world everybody always tries to push me to have Rieslings. Now I love Rieslings for good daytime drinking and just sociable wine, however, they do tend to be super sweet. So do you have a Riesling that you think would pair also well with cookies? I am totally in that camp of loving Riesling and just thinking that it's such a versatile wine with so many different things. One of the reasons why Riesling is so great is because of that crisp acidity that's very cleansing on the palette and this one is sort of a special one, it's an ice wine and this one is from Columbia Valley in Washington and an ice wine is where the grapes are in perfect condition with no botrytis at all and they're in this perfect condition until the very first frost and then what happens is basically it's usually like the family members and some close friends who all get calls in the middle of the night and they have to wake up at like four in the morning, harvest all the grapes while they're still frozen and go to the winery and press them. And then what happens is the sugar is not frozen so that's what gets pressed out, where the water is frozen and that stays behind. So it's such a pure cool wine but I think that it would be beautiful with these cookies. But let's have a taste. Great, um, that is so delicious, oh and it's so not overpoweringly sweet. And it's because of that great acidity. It's so balanced. Well, so which one would you pair with the peanut butter cookie? For the peanut butter, I think I would go with the Tokai because it is a little bit richer in body and because you have all that creaminess from the peanut butter itself and also I love the spice in here and the nutty note. So I think between the cinnamon spice, the nutty notes and that rich texture, um, it's so good. I'm Jordan Salcito and I'm Heather Bertinetti. Catch us again on eHow.com. Cheers guys.