Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
A clever portmanteau of jalapeño (the hot chili pepper) and pinot noir, with the ñ of jalapeño replacing the plain n of pinot. I question the wisdom of adding chili peppers (in sauce form, presumably) to pinot noir. But there is at least one chili pepper wine out there, Chili Dawg from Otter Winery.
The bottle:
A review from a pepper-fancier site:
The nice folks at Johnson’s Orchards, & Peaks of Otter Winery sent me two bottles of their Chili Pepper Wine to sample.
The first one, “Chili Dawg” turned out to be a very nice apple wine.
The bottle features an attractive label of a red faced hound in a suit, holding a wine glass. Poor old hound looks like he might have had a bit too much wine, but, I like it. The side of the label also tells the location of the orchard, and how you can pick your own apples there.
The wine has a nice apple aroma, quickly followed by the aroma of hot peppers.
… Now, to taste the wine. Wow, the first sip hits you with a off dry apple wine, not too sweet at all, and is followed immediately with the chili pepper heat and taste.
… I offer samples of Chili Dawg to several of my friends. They tell me that they think the heat level from the peppers is too much, and they are folks who love hot sauces, and like levels of heat far above average. Each of them had one glass of the wine, and thought that was enough. Seems that the alcohol intensifies the heat from the peppers a bit.
I found the heat level just about right, and finished the rest of the bottle myself. So, my conclusion is that if you are a serious lover of peppers, and off dry country fruit wines, you will probably like Chili Dawg wine a lot.
Apple wine is commonly known as (hard) cider, so this chili pepper wine would count as chilider, I guess.
March 7, 2013 at 7:47 am |
I laughed out loud when I read this strip at breakfast.
March 7, 2013 at 9:53 am |
Aric Olnes on Facebook:
I’m accustomed to using clam juice and maple syrup as an especially appalling combination of foodstuffs. Blessedly, I see no recipes on the web for this pairing.
May 19, 2013 at 9:59 am |
[…] That’s Zen + piñata, with a little joke on Zen. I’m especially fond of portmanteaus with diacritical marks in them; see the Rhymes With Orange with jalapiñot noir in it, here. […]