Secrets.

Last weekend, a friend invited Mike and me to a secret wine club event. That's all I can say.

Just kidding. The "challenge" was to bring a wine you've had before and a small dish to pair with the wine. We had met the club leader earlier in March at a local winery in Berkeley, and she definitely knew her stuff about wine. For example, she mentioned that she loved Donkey and Goat's orange wine.

"What the heck is orange wine?" I asked, thinking that wine made from actual oranges might be interesting but a little bizarre. Fermented oranges? Hmm...

"Oh no, it's a white wine that's been fermented with the grape skins and seeds for a short period of time," she replied.

I thought that was called a rosé, but I was wrong (gasp!). Orange wines involve using white grapes that are allowed to sit with the skins. To make a rosé, red grapes are separated very quickly from their skins.   Learn something new every day!

So anyway, when we got our invitation to the wine club event, we figured we should really bring our a-game. After some discussion, Mike and I decided to make sliders, and not just any sliders, but special sliders of course! We went to the local Mexican store to buy a ribeye steak and short ribs to grind into our burgers. We cooked the burgers in the sous vide, a fancy word for a temperature controlled water bath, so that they remained nice and red, perfectly cooked, and then fried them to give them a nice, brown outside. Then Mike melted shredded cheese combined with a little sodium citrate (to make super smooth cheese) on a sheet pan and cut out round slices. And no burger would be complete without a bun - a homemade bun freckled with black sesame seeds. Then we added caramelized red onions and a little Dijon mustard to round out the flavors.

On Friday night, we did a test run of these burgers along with a French Malbec the sommelier at a local wine shop suggested. While a delicious red wine, it stained our mouths like no other! We decided the burgers needed tiny adjustments (more salt) but were quite pleased with the way they turned out.

We took our sliders over to our friend's friend's apartment for the main event on Saturday evening. Our sliders were a hit, and others brought amazing dishes and wines too. Some had emotional connections to their wines (i.e., they made it themselves) or knew the winemaker. And our friend and her boyfriend brought bacon jam. Bacon. Jam.

It was a great evening - good food, good wine, and new friends that also appreciate our cuisine snobbery. Once you've had bacon jam, you can't go back.

What's your favorite wine and food pairing?