With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, thoughts turn to romance, seduction, and
to the three C’s: champagne, caviar and chocolate. (OK, the six C’s; add color, cut and clarity if you are a nonfoodie. Diamonds do have the power of persuasion.)
“Ice” notwithstanding, we look toward aphrodisiacs to help us on the big day. Nature’s
gift to humans and a way to keep the planet populated, aphrodisiacs are aptly named
after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, sexual ecstasy, and youth.
Aphrodisiacs stimulate or intensify sexual desire, whether by their suggestive appearance, smell, flavor, texture, shape (for example, avocados are rich in flavor, smooth in texture, and shapely in form), or size, or by the nutrients, minerals, vitamins, or stimulants they provide for quick and efficient absorption into the body. The best aphrodisiacs are natural, and as fresh as possible. Major categories include fruits and nuts, vegetables, spices and herbs, chocolate, coffee, fish, meat and eggs, cheese, honey, and wine.
When considering which aphrodisiacs to serve, keep in mind that males are visually stimulated (remember the joke about a man’s dream date — opening the door to a naked woman holding a six-pack), while females are more often stimulated by a sense of comfort, well-being and safety in pleasantly fragrant, soft, romantic surroundings. Pheromones (musky, sweaty aromas that emanate naturally from the body) are also erotic.
Individuals, too, have preferences. While your tastes and preferences are unique, if you are planning to impress or seduce, then the tastes of the object of your affection are more important. Your dreamy, decadent caviar may be “gross — fish eggs” to someone else. I am obsessed with food. I rouse myself in the morning with warm thoughts of what I will enjoy for breakfast. While working in the morning, I keep myself going with the thought of lunch. Occasionally I’ll taste a wine that gives me goose bumps, or that delivers sensual pleasures through it’s color, aromas, flavors, or texture. Later in the day, I fantasize about dinner. All throughout the day, I’m thinking about the wine I’ll enjoy with dinner and the glass that will help me drift off to sleep.
Naturally I have food fantasies, like slipping naked into a vat of chocolate. Sometimes it’s pudding, sometimes frosting, and on occasion it’s a Jacuzzi full of frothy chocolate mousse. I see the picture of a 7-foot-tall champagne-glass whirlpool bath for two in a Poconos resort brochure and want to slide in. I wonder if they’d fill it with chocolate for me.
Occasionally I’ve had the real deal, like the time I was riding bareback in the Costa Rican jungle with my buddy, a French chef. He and I were guest lecturers on a cruise ship. Neither of our partners wanted to join us on this excursion. So there we were, just the two of us and our horses, picking ripe mangoes right off of the trees, biting into the soft skin with our teeth, then tasting the succulent flesh, sucking the juices and licking our lips with pleasure like a couple of wild animals. It was an incredible, sensually charged experience, totally primal and liberating, like dancing under a waterfall or racing down a mountain first thing in the morning. When we got back to the ship, the chef’s wife couldn’t take her eyes off of me. Was she mad at me? Did she suspect something? It was all very innocent after all. Then I looked down and noticed all the mango juice stains on my white t-shirt.
grape goddess® recommends:
What will it take to unleash your loved one’s wild sensual energy for Valentine’s Day? If wine is an option, think bubbly, a seductive red, or a sweet wine. Champagne is a decadent way to begin or end the meal. It is luxurious, special and very uplifting. A personal fave is Bollinger Special Cuvee Brut NV, $46.99 at K&L Wine Merchants. Pinot Noir dominates the blend, so notes of red fruit mingle with lemon zest and smoke. (Click here for digital music clip of New York-based faux French rockers, Nous Non Plus paying homage to Champagne Bollinger on their new album, Ménagerie.)
The intoxicating, earthy scent of Pinot Noir brings even grape goddess® to her knees. Instant arousal in a glass, tantalizing with its perfume and texture, Pinot Noir heightens and focuses sensual awareness, like a camera zooming in for a close up on sheer sensual pleasure. The gorgeous Esterlina Estate Pinot Noir Anderson Valley 2006 is available for $45 at
Andronico’s Bay Area markets, or $28 for a 375 ml half bottle at Half Wit Wines in San Francisco.
An erotic elixir when sipped out of a navel or from the nape of a neck, or in more formal surroundings, sipped between bites of chocolate truffle torte, is Quady Electra, an Orange Muscat dessert wine, $10.99 at
Cost Plus World Market.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Catherine Fallis is the fifth woman in the world to have earned the title of Master Sommelier, and is also a Certified Wine Professional. To read more of her writings on wine, please visit
www.planetgrape.com.
