A tasty sweet wine that’s hard to pronounce

One of our favorite recipes is best paired with a sweet wine, which often means either a sweet Riesling (Rieslings can be either sweet or dry) or a Gewürztraminer. A few nights ago we had our favorite tortellini and prosciutto in a parmesan cream sauce and paired it with a 2006 Maryhill Gewürztraminer with good success.

Gewürztraminer is a tasty wine varietal whose name probably prevents more people from trying it. Pronounced “ga-VERTZ-trah-mee-ner” -- or the shortened “ga-VERTZ” -- it is a white wine that is very easy to sip. Gewürztraminer grapes are actually light purple instead of green, and they grow best in colder climates (like its origins in Germany). Gewürztraminers typically smell very fruity and aromatic and taste lightly sweet. They go great with Asian and spicy foods.

The Maryhill Gewürztraminer was very nice. This prominent winery in Washington State along the Columbia River Gorge is known for making solid wines at affordable prices. We found it well-priced at $10 on sale from a local grocery store.

The 2006 Gewürzt’s smell and taste were well-matched, both screaming of apricot. The nose (smell) also had just a touch of a woody or oakiness, and the sweet fruity taste lingered with a nicely long finish. Not only was this a tasty wine with our dinner, it was also great for sipping after our tortellini was long gone. If it erred either direction, it might have been a tiny bit too sweet for our dinner.

One note: it was very important to keep this wine chilled. As it warmed up, it lost some of the crisp fruitiness. Your Two Wine Nuts are not terribly fancy people so we do not own an ice bucket for chilling our wines. However, we do have several very handy cooler sleeves that can be purchased at places like Bed Bath & Beyond or online at Amazon (search “wine chiller sleeve”).

We keep the sleeves in the freezer and pull them out whenever we have a bottle that needs to be kept cool. Simply slide the bottle in the sleeve and voilà. They typically cost less than $10 and are well-worth having on hand.