Uncork & Unwind pairing Girl Scout cookies with wines
Move over, milk. This Girl Scout cookie season, wine has become the new beverage of choice for grown-up palates.
In January, the folks behind the Vivino wine app published a guide to pairing cookies with wine, and Thursday, the folks at Tumwater’s Uncork & Unwind are offering their own pairings for your palate’s pleasure.
Why wine and cookies?
“We’re nontraditional,” said Sarah Evers, who owns the wine bar along with Michelle Pierce.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for the last couple of years,” Pierce said. “I’d never gotten around to it in time to get the cookies.”
This year, she preordered them from a couple of local troops, and if her Facebook page is any indication, there are a lot of people who are just as excited as she is about the opportunity to try Thin Mints with Oregon pinot noir and Tagalongs with Italian primitivo. As of Tuesday, 53 people said they were planning to go, and another 366 were interested.
The owners have called in extra servers, and they’re prepared to stay late so no cookie lover gets turned away and to serve outside as well as in. “Make sure you bring a coat,” Pierce said.
Neither Evers nor Pierce has yet tried the cookies with wine — and they’re both eager to do so at the tasting.
“Cookies don’t usually last longer than five minutes in my house,” Evers said, “so there’s no thinking about a wine to go with them.”
Pierce created the pairings after doing research and consulting with wine vendor Chris Smeaton of Ambrosia Wine Group.
“Some of it’s a shot in the dark,” she said. “We do things by the seat of our pants.”
While you might expect cookies to be paired mostly with dessert wines, only the over-the-top Samoas, the last in the tasting order, will get such a traditional treatment.
While the cookie pairing is a new idea for Uncork & Unwind, the women are already thinking ahead to next year. “We hope to do cookies and wine and cookies and beer,” Pierce said.
But beer fans won’t have to wait that long for a sweet sensation. Uncork & Unwind offers beer floats in the summer, with popular combinations including IPA with sorbet, dark beer with pecan praline ice cream and coffee stout with caramel almond mocha ice cream.
“We don’t like to do the same old same old,” Pierce said.
“I was a little skeptical,” Evers said, “but they’re actually really good.”
Girl Scout Cookie & Wine Pairing
What: Uncork & Unwind wine bar has matched wines with six popular varieties of Girl Scout cookies. There will be extra boxes of cookies for sale at the tasting, too.
When: 4-7 p.m. Thursday.
Where: Uncork & Unwind, 324 Custer Way SW, Tumwater.
Tickets: $10, $8 for Uncork & Unwind wine club members.
Information: uncorkandunwind.net or 360-943-9463.
Tasting menu
▪ Trefoils, classic shortbread cookies, with St. Josef Lilli sparkling riesling from the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
▪ Savannah Smiles, lemon cookies dusted with powdered sugar, with Abiqua Wind Vineyard Müller-Thurgau from the Willamette Valley. Müller-Thurgau, a white grape that originated in Switzerland and Germany, is a cross of riesling and Madeleine royale.
▪ Thin Mints, chocolate-mint wafers that are the scouts’ best-sellers, according to the Girl Scouts of the USA, with St. Josef pinot noir from the Willamette Valley.
▪ Tagalongs, topped with peanut butter and covered with chocolate, with A Mano primitivo from Puglia, Italy.
▪ Do-si-dos, peanut-butter sandwich cookies, with Wilridge Winery cabernet sauvignon from the Wahluke Slope of the Columbia Valley.
▪ Samoas, cookies wrapped in caramel and coconut and topped with fudge stripes, with Wilridge Winery’s O Red Dessert Wine, a port from Naches Heights near Yakima.
Where to get cookies
The Girl Scouts of Western Washington are selling cookies through Sunday. Here’s how to get your hands on some:
▪ Find nearby booth sales with the Girl Scout Cookie Finder — and download the Cookie Finder app for iPhone and Android devices — at girlscoutcookies.org.
▪ Buy online at bit.ly/1RPvTTM.
Other tastings
Like wine even when no cookies are involved? Here are some other tastings happening in South Sound:
Grand Vin: 1003 Fourth Ave. E, Olympia. Free tastings from 5-7 p.m. the first Friday of each month, with mid-month tastings on some other Fridays. Mid-month tastings generally cost $10. 360-350-4896 or grandvinwinemerchants.com.
LC’s Blackbird Mercantile: 430 Washington St. SE, Olympia. Free tastings from 1-3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. 360-357-7799 or blackbirdmercantile.com.
Total Wine & More: 625 Black Lake Blvd. SW, Olympia. Free tastings from 4-8 p.m. Fridays, from noon-6 p.m. Saturdays and from noon-5 p.m. Sundays. 360-786-5006 or totalwine.com.
The Wine Loft: 401 Columbia St. NW, Olympia. Tastings from 1-5 p.m. every Saturday. $8 cash, $9 credit. 360-754-6208.
This story was originally published March 16, 2016 at 8:35 PM with the headline "Uncork & Unwind pairing Girl Scout cookies with wines."