My simple wish when I started my career was to report on topics I truly loved. Yes, I wanted to get paid to go to concerts and eat at restaurants. Luckily, I’ve spent the the last 30 years in Colorado working as both a food columnist and music writer.
I have reviewed the food at music festivals and talked to chef Radek Cerny about his banjo technique and mandolin virtuoso Mike Marshall about his wine adventures, and reviewed the background music at restaurants.
I’ll admit to sipping numerous quality beverages while covering music in bars and at festivals, but my specialties have seldom intersected the way they did Sept. 27 at the grand opening of the Hospitality Learning Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Chefs were everywhere doing cooking demos and handing out tasty tidbits. I reminisced with chef Kevin Taylor who I’ve known since way back when, and watched Frank Bonnano — owner of Mizuna, Bones, Luca D’Italia etc. — make bechamel sauce for macaroni and cheese with grilled bratwurst.
Auraria’s coolest new facility features a 50-room SpringHill Suites hotel, and academic space packed with high-tech kitchens, a demonstration theater, a beverage sensory analysis lab and a student-run restaurant.
Passing a classroom that had its own wine cellar, glasses were set out for a wine tasting along with buttery triple-cream cheese atop dried Palisade peach halves. The guy at the door said he was going to talk about finding music that goes with a particular type of wine.
He turned out to be Scott O’Neil, resident conductor of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, who told us of his longtime affection for both music and wine. When tasting wine, he’d swirl his glass and press it tightly to his face while inhaling as if to extract every last fragrant note. O’Neil said that we use almost every sense when drinking wine.
“You see the wine. You smell the wine — the sense of smell is is so attached to memory. You taste the wine and feel it on your palate. The only sense missing is hearing.”
Plugging his iPod into the wall, the conductor filled the room with G.F. Handel’s oratorio “Solomon.” We sipped Ruffino Prosecco and listened as the piece started slowly, grew stronger and builds to a triumphant crescendo. “It’s a bright wine and quite effervescent, like the music,” he said. It worked for me although the end of the piece was more red zinfandel than Italian bubbly.
Standard MRIs of the frontal cortex show why good wine and good music go so well together. “They each stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain,” O’Neil said.
Next he poured Napa-grown Franciscan Estates Magnificat, a meritage blend of cabernet, merlot, malbec and petit verdot. This complex but easy-to-sip red matched well with Bach’s “Magnificat,” a soaring piece of Baroque bliss.
Then came the curveball. He pulled out music that wine researcher Clark Smith matched with this kind of wine. “People Are Strange” by The Doors didn’t sound bad with a big red but I was really thinking about a glass of Macallan 15-year-old Scotch. Jazz, he said, actually mated best with Scotch as well as red wine and played a lovely cut by guitarist Pat Metheny.
The challenge of focusing on the nuances of wine and music at the same time was a revelation. It’s inspired me to do some research. So far I’ve found that the Grateful Dead’s “Europe ’72” matches perfectly with the full palate satisfaction of a Yeti Imperial Stout from Denver’s Great Divide Brewery.
EATERY UPDATE
Blue Lagoon Asian Bistro has opened at 1695 Peoria St. in Aurora serving Thai, Japanese and Chinese entrees as well as sushi. … Coming soon: The wood-fired A-Town Pizza, 17060 E. Quincy Ave., Aurora; and Savory Spice Shop in the Southlands Mall. … Legends Grill, a new restaurant at Sports Authority Field, is serving fare using food products from former Broncos. The menu includes sandwiches made with Terrell Davis’s barbecue sauce, Mark Schlereth’s Stinkin’ Good Green Chile on fries and Ed McCaffrey’s mustard and horseradish sauce on brats. Shouldn’t there be something from Elway’s Restaurant?
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
“It is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market-gardeners.” – George Orwell
Read more Nibbles and Colorado Table features at aurorasentinel.com/colorado-table. Send comments to jlehndorff@aurorasentinel.com and be and be sure to “like” the Nibbles Facebook page. John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:25 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, 1390 AM, and kgnu.org).