01-31-25 Interiew - The Wine Yogi Talks Valentine's Day

Why Yogi and I we have gone chocolate shopping. Oh yes, and I'm manage you get it.

We just ate.

If you followed me on Facebook, you can see the amount of chocolate that we just plowed through.

And some pastry.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, lots of stuff. So where did you go? First of all?

So I went to several different places.

I went to Chiacol It's here, which is over at Park Meadows.

That's a small chain.

It's a chain up here in Denver, Gas, so you can there's several locations. I hit a chocolate shop down in downtown Colorado Springs. I think it's another kind of I think it's cacao chemistry. I also went to Paris Baguette because a new one just opened near my house, so I was very excited about that. But there are also Paris Baguettes in Parker and Aurora.

I went to Honeybees Macarone.

I can tell you that my career is that place.

That's over in Highlands Ranch.

And then I also hit up the wine shop at Tony's which is by Tony's Market over in Centennial off of Dry Creek.

And yeah, just a.

Lot of different places, a lot of good yummy foods and then all.

Bad for us.

I went because you guys know I love the chocolate therapist, right, I love the chocolate chair.

We want to give Julie love and the block.

Yes in Littleton, you cannot go wrong there, but we wanted to branch out and give some more.

Of the smaller chocolate shops some love.

I went to Dieters, which is near right by du I mean it's like on the campus almost. They are handcrafted Bavarian artisanal chocolates.

So far, so good.

Because I try to but we tried a bunch of their their truffles.

I bought the.

Cutest thing for Chuck and Q for Valentine's Day. And Chuck, if you're listening, I need you to turn the radio off for just a little bit, okay, ear mummuffs. Put the ear muffs on. And they have these little heart shaped boxes. They're a little like they almost look like a jewelry box that they're made out of chocolate. And they have either three truffles if you get the big one, or one truffle if you get the little one. It is the cutest thing. And I put this on Facebook, but I mean now and all.

Of these places are now coming out like Paris Baggett is releasing all of their Valentine's Day pastry options that you can get as well that are beautiful, and then several the other two places that I went are starting to do like taking orders for their you know, strawberry dipped strawberry chocolate strawberry right. And also they're different truffles and things like that, and you don't have to just

As you know.

What's funny when you go to Europe, they don't have dark chocolate. They just have milk chocolate. But the milk chocolate in Europe tastes so much different than our milk chocolate here because it doesn't have a bunch of crap in it. But I had someone say to me in Europe They're like, what what is it with Americans in dark chocolate. I'm like, we're bitter people. I'm a bitter woman.

And now dark chocolate is fully having a moment. It is.

It is everywhere, and it's delicious and I love it.

And especially if you're Keto and you're really trying to watch your sugar intake, you can still enjoy that chocolate treat because I can't consume a lot of sweets anymore. Anyway, anyone's sitting like right now, I'm kind of.

Like we're like literally drunk from the amount of chocolate the week.

Yeah, dry January, and I've been doing a low carb this whole time. I just finished up a five day mimicking fast, so I've not had a lot of sugar of any kind. I definitely don't have pastry, and so I'm just I barely had like three or four bites and I'm like, Okay, that's enough yet.

Yeah, So I want to say this, if you are wanting to get some really delicious chocolate for someone that you love for Valentine's Day, Do not wait until the day before. I'm going to tell you what happened to me at the chocolate therapists and Littleton and Julie, the owner is so squared away, so I don't want what I'm about to say should not be an.

Indictment on her.

I went to buy chocolate and there was nothing left in the store, and so I was chatting with Julie and She's like, Mandy, I can't even get more ingredients to make more chocolate. If you want to get good chocolate, get it soon and have it for Valentine's Day.

A lot of them you can pre order now, Yeah, pay for it now, and then you'll go pick it up within a period of time, so you're not like necessarily having to pick it up right now and then try to hide it from you know whoever.

You can, you know, make arrangements.

With these different chocolate tears, and yeah you can. I'm going to pick it up on the twelfth through the thirteenth, Julie's having wine and chocolate peering classes.

Unfortunately, Valentine's is sold out. But my birthday the day.

After and if you really want to treat your your sweetheart to a wonderful Valentine's a weekend plan to come to Urray and do the Urray Wine Festival with me and my husband, and you can hear all about our fun flying stories there.

You get plenty of them.

There you go.

So I want to ask a question about wine pairings with chocolate because you did bring in a quite tasty persecco that is alcohol free. That I was that that wine really impressed me as an alcohol real I think you could serve that to someone and they may not know that it was alcohol free.

I definitely think it could pass. Yeah, for sure.

The Cabernet I didn't love, but I.

Do because I had the gorgeous tannons that so many non alcoholic reds lack, and it just was not not my favorite.

But that being said, if you wanted to get someone a really nice bottle of wine to go with their box of chocolate, what do you recommend there? See?

You know, wine and chocolate pairings, that's kind of a classic thing, and so many people will say, oh, well, champagne with chocolate, you know, dipped strawberries. That's less about the chocolate, more about the strawberry that you're pairing with

But if you're looking more into your darker.

Chocolates, that's when you can get into some big old reds. They classically pair, especially if you have red wines like a Charras that has or Sarrah that has a lot of that BlackBerry, a dark jammy fruit component on it, because what happens is it will start pulling out some of those notes out of that chocolate itself, and then the umami and the tannins from the chocolate and the red wine I will start to kind of bounce off of each other.

I like a dark chocolate with a bold red a mall back, a tempernio is something that's got a lot going on in there, because I love the way if you have a really good piece of chocolate and here's a chocolate and wine tasting tip. Put a little piece of chocolate in your mouth and just let it melt. Melt, don't chew it, just let it melt and then sip your wine.

I love that well.

This weekend I was telling you about the baby Ammarone. I'm going to be pouring at the wine galleries more Avino wine and food perty class. It's all going to be focused on Valentine's Day. It's all Italian wines. But I'm making up a chocolate mouse and easy moose that I'm preparing with a luxado cherry drizzle and cherry.

So those are the Italian cherries.

Like if you're familiar at all with old fashions, that's the drizzle or the cherry that kind of goes into it.

It's an Italian cherry. It would be cherry, but it's not the.

Chemically red Die number five. These are smaller, more intense cherries that have kind of a truer cherry flavor that are Italian okay, and you'll often see them used in cocktails, right, but I'm going to use it actually in with this chocolate moose and then I'm pairing.

It with valpolo Cello.

So corvina grape and they've sun dried it on these mats and dried it out and turned them into raisins, and then they've crushed it that first.

How much liquid do they get out of a dried out Is that why it's so expensive.

Why I am marone is pretty expensive?

Okay?

But then when you have they'll do what's called rapasso, and that's the second passing, so they'll crush them again and they'll extract even more juice and then they'll ferment that and then that's typically called va palicello rapasso, which

I want to spend just a second hang on and secondly, grab this card so of the stuff that Chocolate Tears are doing with truffles is pretty amazing. I remember the first time I ever had a truffle. I went to a little chocolate shop and this was I was twenty one, and I went in a little chocolate shop and this lady had like.

Five she had five options.

She had chocolate, she had dark chocolate, she had a coffee truffle, and then like two other that they were fruits somehow, So I would pay attention. You go now like I've got the card, the cheater card from Deaters that they gave me, and they're extraordinary. First of all, they're beautiful. Okay, they the works of arts, they really are. But the cinnamon honey truffle that was quite interesting and quite.

Delicious, and it definitely had that nice cinnamon finish, which was which pairs lovely with Obviously cinnamon honey is fantastic, but cinnamon. Most of people don't think about cinnamon and chocolate. And it's kind of funny. Europeans consider cinnamon to be a savory item, whereas we Americans, you know, we put cinnamon and sugar on buttered toast down that was my classic, you know, on wonderbread.

That was what I grew up in and so we all.

We often associate cinnamon here in the US with all of our sweets, right, But I love it with dark chocolate because it does and I.

Love capsation, so I love the heats.

There's an as dead I was going to get to the aztech.

A little bit of heat to it.

I love that with chocolate because it brings complexity to it. And so that's what I think truffles themselves eight works of art that be because you can do things not only with the shell of chocolate that's going to go around it, that tempered chocolate, but your fillings.

You have such a wide variety that.

You can explore to kind of create these beautiful pairings.

The cherry balsamic.

Truffle that I'm going to tell you that was something I was not expecting to enjoy. It was fantastic and it tasted like a cherry balsamic chocolate, which those three things did not sound like they were going to go together for me, but it was extraordinarily good. And the reason I bring this up is, don't be afraid to experiment.

And what I really like about going to an actual chocolate heer versus just going to your your grocery store and picking up your standard right. So, yeah, your standard assorted box. Not that there's anything wrong with a lot of those. I love, you know a lot of those chocolates as well, but you can just pick out one or two or every and it's in the perfect little box.

And I don't eat a lot of sweets anymore.

It will take me forever to work through anything that's, you know, more than four little morsels of deliciousness. And then if you've actually picked them out for your loved one or for your friend, then it's just that extra little step that shows, Yeah, you're you're showing how much you care about me, and you really a lot of thought went into this.

I feel like, much like wine has come of age in the past twenty years thirty years, I feel like chocolate in the United States has come of age. I was lucky enough to meet a guy in Southwest Florida

And it is amazing watching them.

If you have the chance these artists, because they are some of the chocolate creations and sculptures and things like that that you can make.

It is it's amazing. It's my blowing heads.

Okay, last question before we do of the day, and that is tell the audience anytime you were flying a plane and either got shot at or almost died quickly.

I was shot at flying in Operation Southern Watch.

Saddam was doing some experiments and we were targeted, so that was fun. And then I almost had my own mid air and I mentioned it yesterday on air. We were out over the Atlantic. It's very dark and there's not a lot of light out there. There was no moon and so yeah, we had fighters pass within a couple of feet of us, And well, anytime you're I saw the kind of plane I flews an airfueling tanker.

And I had dragonfly.

Yes, well, well, no, we have a boom.

You do have that.

That's something else at the drogue. But we have a boom that will lower down and the boom operator flies it around. But some of these bigger aircraft can really push us around. And I've had some interesting happenings with aircrew type communication and during air refueling that have not been pleasant and have been kind of scary. But for me, my husband has better stories than I do. So I was pretty vanilla when it came to my flying experience.

Okay, got to ask you, uh this one, I missed it. What chocolate goes with temporneo and suggestions for a good temporaneo. I happen to think dark chocolate goes better with red wine, but I have friends who adore milk chocolate with red wine.

As well.

I think red wine and chocolate chocolate period, But do you have a good tempornio.

I tend to like Rioha just because I think Rioha itself. The tear wire brings a little funkiness to the tipernio. But I mean, honestly, you just can't go wrong. Get a good quality, find a good Spanish wine, a store that has a good Spanish selection, and just start looking at your different types of tempts that are out there, because there are plenty, and work your way through it until you find you're the one that you've like.

I'm the one that makes you happy, all right, guys and gals. You can find all of this information, including to the Texter who just texted me. You can find the name of the non alcoholic prosecco and the non alcoholic cabernet on the blog that I posted on my blog, and you can see that the wineyo you made me a cub reporter today because I went to Deaters to get.

Tried, and the reviews of the wine shop at Tony behind Tony's Market over on Centennial.

And you should just follow her blog anyway, because she's doing this stuff all over the place.

Anyway, now it's time.

For the most exciting segment on the radio of its kind.

In the world of the day.

All right, what is our word of excuse me dat to day? Jump it ahead.

A dunge beatle walks into a bar.

Oh god, he asks one sile question, is this stool taken?

Fantastic?

Oh?

I gotta love that joke.

I can't wait to tell my grandkids that joke. That's gonna they get it because they don't know what it's done. What is a But then I have to explain the joke and then no, no, but then you just explain what dunge is and means. They're eight and six.

Yeah, but then you circle back later, everything later.

All right, here we go. What is our word of the day?

The days of verb? Hey, counter poise.

Counterpoise, verb, counterpoise.

I am going to say it is uh making a coherent argument against something.

So you know, poise is how you carry yourself and conduct yourself.

I would say it's probably misbehaving.

To balance by an opposing weight or to counteract by an opposing force.

Okay, okay, that's the word I learned.

Now.

I didn't know that we won't be.

Using that in the future.

No, probably not. It just seems a little too complicated.

Today's trivia question is what is the full name of the rapper and record producer known as Tyler the Creator. There's a zero percent chance I'm gonna know that.

I don't even know.

I've never even heard.

Of who that is.

Yeah, Tyler isn't his real name?

Tyler something?

It is Tyler a coonema.

Yeah, yeaheah, Okay, something else I won't be using today.

There we go.

I didn't say they were all winners, Okay, I just there. We're going to learn them.

There you go.

What's our Jeopardy category?

Owing pro Each answer starts with p R O going pro okay, ten letter word for the owner of an establishment?

Many?

What's a proprietor.

Profusely productive? Like some authors?

Crystal?

What is prolific?

Correct? Well done?

This gas used primarily as a fuel, is also called crystal.

Is propellant?

I know?

Oh wait, I was not the answer, Manny, what is profane?

Correct?

I'm really glad you didn't make me pronounce the other word. This titan was the father of do Callian.

Yeah, I don't know. P r oh, just think of a titan.

P R O.

Island know one, but I'm up to to zero PROTHEUS.

That is correct.

There you go only really I think one. An in print of your foot can determine if you have a normal?

Hi, what is prolapse?

No? Normal?

What's the pronation? Pronate?

Pronating yeah, pronating yes? But you win either way?

Yeah there yeah, hold on.

Oh and I did want to announce if you want to come to one of.

My classes, I have a I have two spots open at the Wine Gallery one thirty on Sunday for more Avino wine and food pairing. If you call the Wine Gallery at seven one nine four three nine nine four sixty three, tell him you heard about it on the Manny Connell Show.

And White Gallery in Colorado's Colorado Spring Crystal makes all the food I do. I'm just saying, so worth it. You need to dial it up right now and take those last two spots