Wines for Taco Tuesday! Practical Pairings

Episode Transcript

Hello! And welcome to the Wine Pair podcast. I’m Joe, your sommelier of reasonably priced wine, and this is my wife and wine-pairing partner in crime, Carmela. And we are the Wine Pair.

In this episode we are celebrating something that is a tradition in many households - Taco Tuesday! There are lots of families that plan out the foods they are going to eat each day of the week - meatless Monday, fish on Friday - and Tuesdays have become a day when people plan to go all out on Mexican food. And why not? Tacos are awesome, Mexican food is awesome, so why not plan to have it at least once a week?!?

We are not really planners like that - right?!? Like, we actually don’t do a Taco Tuesday.  Although, I do have to say there are still a couple of nights each week that are still pretty traditional in our family. (WHAT DO YOU THINK THOSE DAYS ARE?!?) If we are with your parents, Friday is definitely a seafood night, and that is an old-school Italian Catholic thing because “in the day” every Friday was a meatless Friday, not just during Lent. And Sunday is definitely a pasta day - usually a pasta with red sauce, but it is pretty rare that we don’t have some sort of pasta with the family on a Sunday night. Maybe someday we need to do a contest or something where the prize is a Sunday night dinner with our family!

Ok - back to Mexican foods. While there are lots of great beverages to drink with Mexican foods - a Mexican Coca-Cola, a nice lager beer like a Pacifico or a Negra Modelo, or a top shelf margarita - one of your favorites, Carmela - or a Coronarita (which is amazing) - we thought a nice wine with some tacos feels like something fun to pair. 

For those of you who don’t know what a Coronarita is, we will need to spend some time in a future podcast extolling the virtues of the drink. It is part cocktail, part beer, and all delicious! There is a place in the center of Washington state called Chelan, and there is a Mexican restaurant in town that has mastered the Coronarita - a margarita with a mini-Corona beer in it. Amazeballs!

But, again, back to Mexican food, I will admit that pairing wine with tacos is a little hard for us because you like fish tacos, I like tacos with meat, one of our kids likes bean tacos, plus the food can be anywhere from mild to spicy - so I am not sure we can just choose one wine to pair. And, like we were talking about earlier, a lot of people just don’t think of wine as a thing to pair with Tacos. But maybe we can! Today we are going to find out - and we are going to try three different wines that have we think will work - a Vinho Verde, an Albarino, and a Rioja - so two whites and a red. 

Before we get to the wine, let’s talk a bit about Mexican food. We love Mexican food, but to be honest, I think what we love is a very Americanized version of Mexican food. Lots of cheese, lots of sour cream. 

And, while I love Americanized Mexican food, and we have some really good Mexican food here in the Seattle area, I will say that the best food I have ever had is in Mexico city. I know I have said that to you many times, Carmela. And I have been to a lot of places and had great food - we’ve been all over Italy, I’ve been to Paris, I’ve been to Germany, we’ve been to London, I’ve been to Dublin and Shanghai and Amsterdam, we’ve eaten at great restaurants in the US in places like New York and Chicago and San Francisco and Texas - but I am telling you, the best food I have had is in Mexico City. Some of that food was Mexican - like mole that would blow your socks off, and some was really fancy - I have had the good fortune to eat at Pujol which is always listed as one of the top restaurants in the world. But I have no qualms saying that the food in Mexico City is amazing. 

You love Mexican food, don’t you, Carmela?!? What do you love about it?

• What is your favorite Mexican food?
• I do have to laugh because you have a habit of always wanting to order last when we go to a restaurant, even though you generally always order the same thing. It is sort of inevitable that when the waitperson comes, you will always say “come back to me” - but I can pretty much guess what you are going to order. If it’s a Mexican restaurant, it is kind of a no brainer. You are going to order the fish tacos.
• But you also love Nachos. We have some arguments about Nachos that we need to talk about a bit. First, what toppings do you like on your Nachos?
• Second, I am a big fan of microwaving Nachos, but you like to bake them. Why?
  • I think the microwave perfectly melts the cheese and heats the food, but has no impact on the chips. 
  • The oven, on the other hand, has a habit of burning the chips and browning the cheese, which I don’t love. 
• You also love guacamole. Like, I think you eat guacamole or an avocado every day - which is kind of becoming normal now. 

Ok, Ok, Ok, let’s get down to the topic at hand and talk about the food we are going, to pair with our wines. We have picked up some food from a local Mexican fast food place that we really like called Taco Time and that is probably not traditional, but probably very typical for what the average person would eat if they are having a taco tuesday. We have ordered 

• Fish taco with a soft shell
• Beef taco with a hard shell
• OTHER TACOS
• And Mexi-fries which are just seasoned tater tots - but are good!
• And we have some guacamole and some hot sauce to go with it.

Anyway, let’s get to tasting. Are you ready?

Ok, first I am going to do a quick, quick, quick overview of each of the wines. I think I need to be timed because, to be honest, this can be the most boring part.But, these are wines that the quote-enquote experts say are good to pair with Mexican food. And, I have to admit, it seems a little pandering - and I think you mentioned this, too - that the wines people generally suggest to pair with Mexican wines are Spanish or Portugese wines, but the food in those countries has little resemblance to Mexican food. Ok, let’s do no more than 45 seconds on each varietal - set the timer, Carmela:

• Vinho Verde - comes from Portugal mostly and can be white, rose’, or red, but usually I think you find it as a white in the US. It is a very light, low alcohol, dry, and highly acidic wine which makes it perfect for things like fish tacos. It is a dry wine. 
• Albarino - Comes from Spain as well as Portugal, with a tiny bit grown in the US and other places.Like Vinho Verde, it tends to be a pretty low alcohol wine with very light body and tannins but high acidity. It is grown near the sea, and is often compared to a Viognier, Dry Riesling, it is also a dry white wine. 
• Rioja - which is a wine made from the tempranillo grape, and that is a grape that is overwhelmingly grown in Spain, although it is also grown in Portugal, Argentina, and more and more in other places, even in the US. The most famous and some would consider the best are from Rioja. If you are drinking a Rioja wine, it is a tempranillo from Rioja Spain. Tends to be medium to heavy in a lot of areas - body, acidity, tannins, and alcohol, but it is a dry wine

And, after we taste and review these wines, we are going to compare the tastes and smells we think experienced with those of what would be expected from each

Wines

Wine: Vinho Verde

Region: Portugal, Vinho Verde

Producer: Casal Garcia

Year: NV

Price: $7.99

Retailer: Fred Meyer

Alcohol: 9.5%

Grapes (if not clear): Vinho Verde

Rating: Joe 9 Carmela 9

Wine: Alabrino

Region: Spain, Rias Baixas

Producer: Seastone (bought it because of the label)

Year: 2020

Price: $13.99

Retailer: Total Wine

Alcohol: 12.5%

Grapes (if not clear):  Albarino

Rating: Joe 7 Carmela 7

Wine: Rioja Reserva

Region: Spain, Rioja

Producer: Latitud 42

Year: 2011

Price: $17.99

Retailer: Total Wine

Alcohol: 14.5%

Grapes: 95% Tempranillo, 5% Graciano (sometimes called by other names like Xeres, etc.)

Rating: Joe  5 Carmela 5

Taste profiles expected

• Vinho Verde - lemonade, pink grapefruit, lime zest, yellow apple, white blossom (can be a bit effervescent, citrus, mango, apples, melon)
• Rioja - cherry, black cherry, dried fig, cedar, tobacco, cigar box, dill, brown sugar (chocolate, molasses, rocks, parmesan cheese, black pepper, flowers, dried leaves, cured meats, raisin, dried blueberry, blackberry jam)
• Albarino - lemon zest, grapefruit, honeydew, nectarine, saline, (floral aromatics and peach, apricots and citrus notes)

And our last question: What is the wine we are finishing tonight? 

Well, that was super fun! 

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