This Wine Columnist Just Seriously Paired Wine With Cheetos And We Need To Try It ASAP
Your after-work snack just got a major upgrade thanks to this wine columnist. Cheetos are back in vogue, even though your late-night drunk persona knows they never left. They've stormed down runways and have appeared in some of LA's hottest bakeshops. Now, they're pretty much as chic as they'll ever be, as wine columnist and founder of The Vinum Collective, Vanessa Price, has cracked the code on how to pair your favorite cheesy corn puff snack with a decent glass of wine.
Price, who has written several other wine pairing pieces for Grub Street, such as "How to Pair Wine With Breakfast," "How to Pair Wine With Nachos," and our personal favorite, "How to Pair Wine With Halloween Candy," is no stranger to wine, and enjoys making it more approachable by dreaming up creative pairings. "I'm classically trained in my wine studies, having earned my Diploma from WSET," she told The Daily Meal.
"I now teach as well for the global organization but I remain a big believer that wine should be much more accessible than we industry folks sometimes make it. So talking about how wine pairs with the everyday indulgences we all enjoy seemed like a great way to pave a path of approachability for the wine curious that maybe don't want to take formal classes. If we can learn something while having fun, that seems like a win win. And honestly what is more fun than eating Cheetos and drinking wine? It's just so rebelliously delicious!"
In her Cheetos piece, Price extolls the virtues of a white Sancerre when paired with salty, fluorescent orange Cheetos, and even suggests three specific bottles to get started with. She recommends a $60 bottle of "Les Monts Damnés" from Pascal Cotat, because she's all about a good high-low pairing. "Pascal Cotat is a winemaker of actual cult status, and these whites age like a hearty red wine would," she writes. "You can drink them young, but patience will be oh so rewarding. Lucky for you, Cheetos never really go bad."
Even though we are obsessed with this idea and plan on hitting up both a 7-Eleven for Cheetos and a Trader Joe's for some wine, social media seems to be a little mixed on the idea.
I love wine and I love Cheetos, pair me up!
— Ol Skool House (@dredlocsc) May 15, 2018
🤢
— Zero Waste Co (@ZeroWasteCo) May 15, 2018
"There have been a few doubters amongst the crowd but I'm hoping one day I can win them over to thinking outside the box with how we perceive wine's place in our everyday lifestyles," Price told The Daily Meal. "We can love and respect wine without taking it too seriously!" And as for learning which wines pair best with a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Price revealed that we may soon be in luck. "I've gotten a lot of requests for a follow up pairing for the Hot version since this article dropped. I may have to put that in the pipeline," she divulged.
Now if only we could figure out what flavor Funyon goes best with the 50 best rosés for summer....