Wine cellar ensures great pairings when they entertain

Gatherings at Michael and Maureen McCabe’s Glendale home are sure to include great food and wonderful wines.

Maureen, who loves to cook unique and upscale dishes, said she uses wine in recipes that have sauces because that’s when the profile flavor will come through.

Once her menu is fixed, her husband carefully pairs her courses with some of the approximately 1,500 bottles of wine currently in their wine cellar.

“I think wine and food is a symbiotic relationship,” he said. “If pairing is done well, the flavors of the food are enhanced as well as the flavors of the wine.”

Maureen said that their interest in wine started soon after they met in 2004. But at that time, her interest was that she just liked to drink it.

He liked to drink it, too, but he had already spent a good amount of time studying it. She is a certified financial planner and owner of Maureen McCabe LLC, Glendale. He is retired but was general counsel for MMSD.

“When we were starting to go out together, I would come over to her house and she had a little wine rack with about six bottles in it. And they weren’t good. I decided to replace them for her, and it grew and grew from there,” he said.

Soon they met people in the American Institute for Wine and Food, and they began going to wine tastings, wine dinners and other wine events. They also began entertaining at home, making meals for which they chose pairings from their growing collection of wines.

Michael said that early on, they might serve two kinds of wine to give people a choice. Now, it’s not unusual for him to pair a different bottle of wine with each course.

By about 2006, both were so enthralled with wine that they had an 8-by-10-foot cellar built in their basement, complete with a high tasting table and a special cooling unit that keeps all their bottles of wine at the perfect temperature: 55 degrees.

“We put a backup generator in the house primarily for the wine cellar,” she said. “The most important thing for us is that the cooling system doesn’t go out.”

The couple estimated that these days they entertain about every two weeks. They also host events for holidays and special occasions. And each night for dinner, they split a bottle of wine with their evening meal.

They recently talked about entertaining and the importance of serving great wine with great food.

Q. Do you serve wine at every event, even informal meals?

Maureen: We serve wine most times. An exception would be with Mexican food. We love Margaritas.

Q. How do you know what kind of wine to serve with different foods?

Michael: You don’t want the wine to fight the food. You want it to complement or enhance it. If Maureen makes steak, I would serve Bordeaux or a Cabernet. Lighter red meats like pork or veal would get either a Burgundy, a Pinot Noir or a dry Riesling.

Spicy foods go with a sweet wine like a Riesling or Gruner Veltliner. You want it sweeter to set off the spiciness of the food.

For poultry it depends on the sauce you’re using. If it’s Italian I would go with a red from Italy or anything from Borolo, which is an Italian wine. If it’s a barbecue with ribs or chicken, I would serve beer — or a very light fruity Shiraz.

Maureen: For seafood, if I’m making something like scallops, you might want to have a nice Chardonnay or a white burgundy.

Q. Do you ever buy wine and find you don’t like it?

Michael: Yes. It goes under the sink for Maureen to cook with. Then it’s called under-the-sink cooking wine.

Q. What should people know about storing or serving wine?

Maureen: The temperature we drink wine at makes a difference. Wine should be served in the mid 60-degree range.

Michael: If it’s warm, it tastes flat then. It kicks all the life out of it.

Maureen: The glasses you serve it in also makes a difference. There is a glass for every varietal of wine. We have four different kinds of glasses each for a different varietal. Good-quality glass is important. The wine will taste best in the appropriate glass.

Q. What do you love about entertaining?

Maureen: Cooking for a group of appreciative people is a lot of fun. We love to show off our food, wine, home and our art. Michael has become an artist in his retirement.

Q: Where do you get your favorite wines?

Michael: We buy online and in Chicago. About half of what we have is from Waterford Wine Company on Brady Street.

Q. What are your favorite spices for cooking and why?

Maureen: My favorite spice is rosemary. In addition to being used in so many things, the stalks are great for using as flavorful skewers. I also love thyme, as it enhances many dishes. We grow both rosemary and thyme year-round.

Q. Do you remember the first time you entertained? What did you make? Was it a flop or a success and why?

Maureen: We had the entire McCabe Clan for Christmas dinner. We had 18 for a sit-down dinner. I served crown roast of pork. I’m sure it was a roaring success.

Michael: Wine was probably Pinot Noir from Oregon as we were really into that at the time, and it goes well with pork

Q. What cuisines do you specialize in?

Maureen: I love to cook Italian, as it seems to come the most naturally to me. Although I am adopted, I do know my heritage as Italian and Irish. That must be why my favorite food is the potato.

Q. What are your signature dishes?

Maureen: Risotto, homemade pasta, crab cakes, veal cordon bleu with homemade veal stock sauce, and Mexican chocolate tart.

Q. What food celebrity influences you most and how?

Maureen: I am addicted to Food Network: I love “Chopped” and “Iron Chef.” I have learned a lot just by watching. I was fortunate enough to have “a day in the kitchen” with the late Charlie Trotter in Chicago, and twice I attended “a day in the kitchen” at Sanford with Chef Justin Aprahamian. Those experiences taught me I never want to work in a restaurant. … it’s just too hard.

Q. Do you have a favorite cookbook or cookbook author you keep returning to?

Maureen: I used to be a cookbook collector until I learned the Internet is a much better source for me and it takes up a lot less room. I use Epicurious.com, Pinterest.com, and foodnetwork.com. I subscribe to Cooks Illustrated magazine and Food and Wine magazine. Having spent a week at a boot camp at the Culinary Institute in New York, I use their book, “The Professional Chef,” as a bible for techniques.

Q. Do you follow themes for parties? If so, what were some favorites?

Maureen: We do some fundraising dinners for our church and will often have a theme then. Themes I have used are seafood, international (each course form a different country) and foods from specific countries. … It makes sense because we can then pair the food with wines from the regions.

Michael: A few years ago we had a party where we served Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Burgundy and a Cabernet. We had two bottles of each variety of wine. One was from another country and one was from the U.S. We put them all in brown paper bags and had our guests compare them. They were all from the same year and were all around the same price.

Maureen: I served small plates of food. Our guests were completely split on which wines they liked best.

Q. What kitchen apparatus could you not live without?

Maureen: Wooden spoons, tongs, a whisk, a micro planer and my food processor. Also my Santoku knife and my Thermapen thermometer. It’s a digital thermometer for meat and is so quick.

Michael: Must have a carafe for decanting and the correct glasses that properly showcase the wine. We use different Riedel or Zalto brand glasses for each wine varietal.

Q. If you could have just one bottle of wine, what would it be?

Michael: Charmes-Chambertin, 1959, Paul Bouchard. It’s a French burgundy.

Q. Do you travel to find great wines?

Michael: We go to a restaurant in Tampa, Florida, twice a year for wine. We’ve been doing that for nine years. It’s called Bern’s Steak House. They have 100,000 bottles of wine in their cellar (at the restaurant) and one million bottles in a two-story brick warehouse.

Maureen: They have the best wine list in the world for old wines.

Q. What’s the most expensive bottle of wine you ever bought?

Michael: Maureen once bought me a bottle that was $300. We had a bottle at Bern’s once that was $800.

Q. Was the $800 bottle it worth it?

Michael: Oh, yes. Definitely.

Great Hosts nomination

Fred and Kay Austermann, who were featured as Great Hosts themselves, nominated friends Michael and Maureen McCabe for a Great Host feature.

They wrote: “We became friends through the Milwaukee Chapter of the American Institute of Food & Wine. Fred and I had the opportunity to often enjoy Maureen’s excellent cooking … and a sampling of Mike’s outstanding wine collection.

“Their home is on the Milwaukee River in Glendale and is always graced with the gorgeous orchids Mike raises.”

Send your nominations of noteworthy Milwaukee-area hosts to GREAT HOSTS, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Food Section, P.O. Box 371, Milwaukee, WI 53201 or email tonstohs@journalsentinel.com. Be specific, and be sure to include name and daytime contact information both for yourself and your nominee.

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