- Can you smell that lychee?
- Can I be honest, I'll be so honest with you.
I swear to God and maybe it's just me,
I smell a little shit, swear to God, to me, something
in there smells a little like shit.
- But that's the greatest thing about wine Harley
is that just because I smell lychees and rose
and you smell shit, it doesn't mean
that it's right or correct.
- There's flowers there,
like I'm walking through a flower patch.
- A flower patch?
- Yeah there's a shit in there too.
- Welcome back to Wine & Cheeseburger
I'm Harley Morenstein.
And this is a show where I get paid
to eat takeout and drink wine, with my pants on.
My pants are going to be on for
like the first time in six months.
On today's episode, I'm challenging my Grape Guru Lara
to find the perfect wine pairing for a falafel sandwich.
You don't know what falafel is?
well you're going to find out today baby!
Mashed chickpeas formed into patties
then deep-fried, stuffed in a supple pita pocket.
And if you know what's up, smothered in spicy red sauce
that'll kick your teeth in, then topped off
with creamy white sauce for good measure.
More of that. More, more!
Too much.
- You okay?
- I'm very hungover.
- Why haven't we been doing this the whole time?
- Falafel, the red sauce
you could smell it. Singes the nostrils.
- Okay I'm good now.
- I love falafel.
- Me too, and the most important part.
- That's too much sauce.
- Imagine someone was like, "That's too much wine."
This is, I'm not going lie, it's like one of the first times
I'm having a falafel sober in like seven years.
- It smells fresh and garlicky, We're going to take a bite?
- Take a bite. Love it.
Yeah. Take a bite of that.
- What are you doing?
- So what do you think?
- Hmm, the garlic sauce is my favorite, but might be one
of the hardest things to pair wine to.
- How about this red sauce?
- I like a little red sauce.
- How you going to pair wine to that?
- It's really diff...
that's too much.
- For who?
- It's really spicy, Harley.
- "It's really spicy, Harley." You must think I'm some sort of bitch.
- Take a bite.
- That's hot.
You're right. That is hot.
- Mmm.
- It's hot.
- It's really spicy. Mistakes were made.
That was too much hot sauce. You ready for some wine?
- Mmhmm.
- I'm going to go get the wine.
- Let's get it.
- Now that she's gone it's time
for another one of Harley's Hacks.
- Harley's Hacks.
- Okay. So let's see you got a new bottle
of wine and you want to drink it.
Problem is, it's not chilled.
- Yo.
- Yeah?
- You say you want to chill?
- No man get out of here.
- Chill.
- All you got to do is take your bottle
of wine, wrap it in a wet paper towel.
And then you can take that wet paper towel put it
in the freezer. Or let's just say you don't have a freezer.
Take that ice, put the salt in there, take the bottle
and put it in that salty brine. Time jump.
And now we've jumped ahead into the future and check it out.
Don't take my word for it.
- Very chill.
- That's right. The more you know.
- I can barely taste the spice now.
What about you? You okay?
- I'm good, much better.
- Ready for wine number one?
- Yes.
- So we have a lot of Middle Eastern flavors in the food
and we are going to have a classic French wine called...
- Gewurztraminer?
- Yes! Good job Harley.
- So Gewurztraminer is a very aromatic wine, which means
when you smell it you're going to be able to smell a lot
of floral, a lot of fruit. It's going to be the perfect
counterbalance to all that spice.
So now, take a bite of your falafel.
You ready?
- Yeah.
- Cheers.
- Delicious.
- That's a delicious wine. All those floral notes like rose
and white flower, honeysuckle even, are really bringing
out the greenness of the parsley and the tomato.
It's making it taste way fresher to me, what about you?
- Agreed. The hot sauce itself tastes much fresher also,
like the hot sauce before was just a hot sauce.
Now I'm tasting like the ingredients
that make this hot sauce.
- It's actually complimenting the hot sauce
and all the elements of the falafel.
Okay, if we're going to move on to wine number two
we need to cleanse our palates.
- And I'm going to need another falafel.
- Today we're going to use milk.
- Milk?
- Yeah.
- All right.
- Can someone get Harley a glass of milk?
- No, it's not necessary. Brought my own.
- Well that really neutralized everything that was
the perfect palate cleanser.
- Yeah it was. I like that drinking milk from a flask is
good because I don't get a milk mustache after.
- Ready for wine number two?
- Absolutely.
- Okay. I picked a Riesling and to me Riesling
and spicy food are just synonymous with each other.
The interesting thing about this wine particularly is
that it's a biodynamic wine in biodynamic farming.
They'll follow a very specific biodynamic calendar.
So you have root days, fruit days,
flower days and leaf days.
And what you do to the vineyard on each
of those days is very specific. You ready?
- Yeah. I'm a dunking in the spice boy,
dunking in the spice.
- It's pairing so nicely with all the Middle Eastern spices
in that falafel and all of that acidity
doesn't make it spicy to me at all
it's really neutralizing the spice.
- This did something really interesting.
- What was that?
- This mixture kind of like tapped into a part
of my tongue that I feel hasn't been used in a long time.
Directly in the middle of my tongue is bumping right now.
Like it's not spicy, but there's a kick.
Like it's like it's alive you know what I mean?
It's like it's taken away the heat aspect of the spice
but giving you all the flavors that they've put
into that beautiful hot sauce.
So you can actually really enjoy the flavor
versus just being attacked by the heatness of it.
- Well, I don't get it like Riesling giving you kickbacks
or what? You're like hyping up the Riesling so much.
Is that your favorite type of wine?
- I don't think I have a favorite.
- Riesling is in your top three?
- I don't know if it would be in my top three.
- No one's ever asked you this?
- No. You're the first.
- Yeah!
- Wine number three.
- Let's get it.
- Albariño from Spain.
- Albariño.
- That sounds better than what I have just said.
- Ahhh! Albariño.
- There you go. This is from Spain and Spain is so warm
that you're going to have a lot of really ripe fruit flavors
on this, but still have a lot of that really zippy acidity.
- When I say what they smell like, I'm being serious.
It's not, it's never going to come to me
in the form of like a fruit or a wood.
- That's okay.
- It comes in like--
- Experiences, memories?
- Yeah, exactly and like, smell can make me
time travel. I'm smelling this right now, summer.
This is like my childhood summer
that I'm smelling right now.
- You know what I smell on that when you say that?
- What?
- I smell fresh cut grass.
- Maybe a little bike tire maybe, I don't know yet.
- Honeydew, melon.
- Okay. Let's get it.
This brings out a lot of flavor in the food
but the spice is out here too.
- It's not balancing the spice as well the other ones did--
- No and I'm okay with it, but it brought
the spice out right now.
- And it makes me taste the parsley a lot more
and a lot of the spices and the actual falafel a lot more.
- Just going to cleanse my palate right now. Nothing to do with
the spice, just cleansing my palate.
- Harley, you have a favorite?
- It's pretty tough, these are
the most similar three wines we've had.
A Riesling you love the Riesling.
So I feel like bad if I don't go with that.
Spanish lover though, Spanish lover
I might have to go with this.
- Spanish wine.
- Let's hit again.
I feel like we can get a better connection.
- It's hard for me to lift my arms.
- Don't worry I'll do it.
- Ready?
- Yeah.
- I'm sorry that was embarrassing.
- Say excuse me.
- I forgot was with someone else, I apologize, excuse me.
- Harley you don't look so good.
Maybe you should just stop drinking the hot sauce.
- I'm good.
- Are you sure?
- Mmhmm.
- Cheers.
- I'm spice boy.
- You should stop drinking that.
- Spice boy does what he wants.
- I think we might need to take you to the hospital.