Best-selling author explains the complexity of pairing wine with Girl Scout cookies

The Girl Scouts have, no doubt, infiltrated your life by now. And you could privately stuff your face with cookies, but we’d like to suggest a more sophisticated way to enjoy those tiny morsels of heaven.

We turned to the expert palate of Madeline Puckette, co-founder of WineFolly.com and a certified Sommelier. She recently became a New York Times Best Selling Author for her book “Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine” (the top-selling wine book on Amazon, too).

“It’s very simple, I try to keep it simple, that’s it,” Puckette said of her approach to wine.

Madeline is convinced anyone can learn how to enjoy wine because it’s like learning how to play a game.

“Like chess. You can learn the basic moves and try playing the game and then the more you get into chess the more the complexity reveals itself to you, and you start realizing there might be formulas or secret … and then beyond formulas there’s the big vision of the game,” Puckette said.

This vision includes pairing Girl Scout cookies with wine. A task Puckette took as seriously as a chess master. She mumbled to herself while scribbling notes on to a sheet of paper.

“You really have to imagine it, so it takes a little bit of time for me to just be like ‘OK, I’m imagining chewing on the shortbread so what’s the perfect thing to put in my mouth right now…,'” Puckette trailed off as she became lost in her vision. “Oh! I know … see? Works every time you just have to imagine it.”

The only cookie with a perplexing pairing turned out to be the Thin Mint. So, we’ll start with the Samoas, one of Puckette’s favorite Girl Scout cookies. She said the perfect pairing would be a sparkling Italian red, on the sweet side.

Next, to Tagalongs, which are peanut butter morsels covered in chocolate.

“By far a fresh ruby port. One of those cheap ones like $10, $15. You get a bottle, you can keep it in your fridge for, like, a couple months. They last forever. And you just pour a little three-ounce portion with your Tagalongs. Take a bite of the Tagalong and sip it with the ruby port. It’s delicious,” Puckette said.

There’s also the popular shortbread cookies. A simple cookie, but with a surprisingly delightful pairing: Riesling.

“I’m imagining it’s … first of all, it’s shortbread. It’s butter, it’s butter-based so you have that fatness and Riesling has a super high acidity content and that acidity will greet the fat and create a new flavor and, in fact, I also think that the late harvest Riesling with the shortbread sort of simulates what the lemon shortbread cookies try to do because they add lemon to the shortbread cookie to create acidity but you could actually do it yourself by adding a little Riesling wine and it’s more fun,” Puckette said.

Madeline had a fairly easy time pairing those cookies. But that darn Thin Mint had her weighing the wine options of the world.

“I’m thinking mint is a characteristic you find in a lot of high-end red wine, you can find it in Shiraz, you can find it in Cabernet Sauvignon, you can find it in Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Petit Verdot, the mint is like, when you get into high-end wine, mint is like ‘oh this is good!’, and yet those wines tend to be dry. So, traditionally a thin mint would go with one of these wines but because it’s sweet I feel like there’s going to be a pallet … it might not work. So I’m feeling funny about recommending it,” Puckette struggled.

She said there might be just one wine out there that pairs with the Thin Mint.