Wine and cheese pairing #1

I am going to be wined out by the end of today, after going to the wine pairing and tasting at Belivea Winery with Megan we decided on the way home to end up doing a wine a cheese pairing. I figured why not and sure enough we were on the way to "Gucci" Kroger before I could bat an eyelash. Megan had done a little internet searching and she found out what kinds of cheeses paired with what kinds of wine. We ended up deciding to get an pair the following cheeses. Gouda with Cabernet Sauvignon, Asiago with Merlot, and Gruyere and Sauvignon Blanc. 

                           

 The first pairing we did was the Gouda with the Barefoot Cabernet Sauvignon, the wine by itself was good, it was dry, with hints of dark fruit such as plums and currents. A very dry yet fruit wine, the heat of the wine was a little strong with the alcohol content being 13.5%. The Gouda cheese was very rubbery and sticky kind of, I have heard lots about gouda but do not recall ever having any. The cheese was a little smokey and on the tongue it helped lower the heat from the alcohol, this cheese and wine pairing was hands down our favorite of the evening.

                           


















The next pairing we had was the Turning Leaf Merlot with the Asiago Cheese. The wine by itself I was not a fan of, it was very dry and the fruity aspects to it just didn't seem to mellow with me. The heat from this wine wasn't enormous but it was enough to turn me away. The jammy blackberryness of this wine just sort of made it bitter on my palate. I though that the cheese would make this wine taste a little better but it did not at all. I am a fan of asiago cheese but I feel this cheese would be served better in a grilled cheese sandwich and not just for table cheese. The cheese was very bitter and sharp, the bitterness of the wine along with the bitterness of the cheese made for a rather odd pairing but I guess it would work better with the more aged palate.                                                              

Last up on the agenda we had the Gruyere cheese paired with a favorite of mine, the Rex-Goliath Sauvignon blanc! I enjoy this wine and thought why not pair it with a cheese. The wine by itself tastes and smells of a lime, citrus, and green apple. A very refreshing wine that cleanses the palate. The wine was very nice and reminds me of summer time. The cheese however was not so light and refreshing. The cheese was not very good, it was very heavy and smokey, almost overwhelmingly smoky. Megan and I found this pairing to be counterproductive. After tasting the cheese and following it with the wine the cheese almost seemed to kill the fruit flavors of the wine and the heat from the alcohol more prominent. It was very odd to have a cheese actually bring out more heat as apposed to deteriorating it. At the end of the tasting we got a little carried away and started talking and then went back to our favorite cheese, the Gouda, and ate some of it while we were finishing our glasses of the Sauvignon Blanc. And sure enough the Gouda paired better with it than the Gruyere! We continued to enjoy the new found delicious combo until we realized that these blogs needed to be typed and submitted rather quickly.

Overall this was a cool experience and I am glad we decided to do it in such a spur of the moment thing! Below is a picture of us and our layout. We decided that today April 26th is now national Kyle and Megan wine tasting and adventure day for the years to come!

 

Beliveau Winery Tasting and Pairing Extravaganza!

Today I decided to take advantage of the opportunity by Professor Boyer made available to us by signing up and traveling through the beautiful Appalachian mountains and down into the one of the many valleys in this part of Virginia. It was a wine pairing class that took about 45 minuets where they help you teach you and your palate how to pair different types of wine with different types of food. I decided to sign up and go to this event with my friend Megan who is also in the class with me. We signed up for the 2pm wine pairing class and we began our 12 mile journey into the mountains. The ride there was seemed a lot further than just 12 miles, it felt like we went like 30. The winding road that we took also made me feel a little ill by the time we got there, also combined with my choice of activities yesterday prior to the Virginia Tech Football's annual Spring Game. Regardless of my current state of uneasiness I continued to trek on. The photo above is a photo, prior to the tasting, of Megan and I on the far left of the picture and two other classmates that we met there and just hopped in the photo! And the picture below is of the tasting room that the class/workshop was being held in. 

 The beginning of the workshop was Chef Dell, who is the lead chef/catering guy, not really sure about the job title haha. He introduced himself and then introduced and talked about the kinds of wines that they had prepared for us to try and they were laid out in a specific pattern in order for us to keep track of each wine we were tasting. On the plate in the picture below was 5 items for us to taste, a lemon, an apple slice, a peppermint, butter, and the cracker on the plate is just there in order for us to serve the butter to ourselves. We started matching the acidity of the lemon to each of the wines and learned that the more acidic the wine the more you should pair an acidic food with it. Before I continue I need to point out that everything Chef Dell said about each wine was right on the money. He was an excellent teacher and I would highly recommend this workshop for anyone that wants to get started tasting and drinking wines, 

Then we moved onto the sweetness of the apple and I found that apple paired very nicely with the Sweet Surrender, the sweetness in both the apple and the wine just really clicked for me. Then we moved onto the butter which I was not really a fan of eating straight butter but for the sake of Chef Dell I did it. The fat from the butter complemented their Cabernet Sauvignon very nicely and made it taste more full bodied and really just rounded the taste off to make it quite delectable. I learned that butter or the fat in butter helped cut the tannins the wines and that just blew me away the difference with and without the butter. I like Cabernet Sauvignon's and they are one of my favorite red wines but I didn't care for this one it was almost too dry when drinking it without the butter. I never thought I would not like a wine regularly then just love it when pairing it with something. I couldn't put my finger on why I wasn't a big fan of it. The fourth item we used to taste with was the salt. This was very interesting to learn that the salt with the Sweet Surrender was a very nice pairing, or at least I thought so. It reduced the sweetness and kinda acted like a salty sweet chocolate covered pretzel and reminded me of like dessert sort of. 

After the tasting we ventured out to the back part of the winery that has a small overlook of the surrounding forest then took some pictures of the winery from that perspective then proceeded to take a terrible selfie in regards to me, I look like I just rolled out of bed. Also below is a picture of one of the vines located right next to the parking lot that didn't yet have any grapes on them but had little blossoms that were getting ready to pop up for the spring. 

 Below are the wines that we were tasting in order from left to right and a few thoughts of mine regarding to them.

Kaleidoscope - I thought this wine was very unique, it did not taste like any other Pinot Grigio I have ever had before, it was more light and dry than previous ones that I have tasted. I really enjoyed this wine when paired with the Lemon.
Mystique - One of the better Chardonnays that I've ever had, not really sure what made this one stand out from others but I think it might have been just the ability to pair things with it to make it open up under different tastes. I put down in my notes highlighted "Mystique with butter, oddly my favorite pairing of the day". I remember Chef Dell saying that the fat from the butter helps cut down the tannins in the wine and allows it to be a more mellow of a taste and the wine just opened up for me.
Silhouette - I am a fan of Cabernet Sauvignon's but this one didn't do it for me when bland tasting it, but it did however pair very nicely with the butter, the fat really did it's work on the tannins and really allowed the flavors of the oak and spices to come through. Still just didn't do it for me it came over to me as just too darn dry.
Sweet Surrender - A very nice wine, it smelled exactly like Welch's Grape juice. Was a very nice table wine. I haven't had too many table wines but this one is my favorite kind that I've tried. And it paired very nicely with the salt as I said above it reminded me of the sensation you get when you bite into a salty chocolate covered pretzel. It was very unique but overall a great wine. If it weren't so much money per bottle I would have grabbed one or two.

                                  

Wine dinner #2

 Just last night I decided to do another wine dinner but this time with just myself! Since I couldn't find anyone from class that was available to and my roommates didn't want join me (Some Lame's if you ask me). But that didn't stop me from preparing my mom's special teriyaki chicken. First lets get to the appetizer. As you can tell I'm no fancy dude when it comes to taste in food and wine, or for that matter even presentation. Some simple garlic and onion cream cheese dip and some sun dried tomato and basil wheat thins will get the job done for me. I decided to get the Beringer Chenin Blanc ($4, alch content 11.5%), mainly because I had never had a Chenin Blanc before and the cheap price tag at Foodlion didn't hurt either. The nose on the wine immediately screamed orange and citrus, with a hint of honey or honeysuckle like a sweet springtime air. The taste was one of those wines that tastes exactly how it smells, nothing complex about it, just a simple, sweet, light, and refreshing wine. After clearing my palate with a few crackers and cheese I began to notice some hints of melon and almost like a really sweet cantaloupe, it was very interesting. The wine also had a lack of body and the heat from the alcohol seemed to linger in the aftertaste and leave your mouth with an odd taste. I found this surprising considering the relatively low alcohol content of the wine at only 11.5%. What I originally thought would be a simple wine ended up having a lot more characteristics than I had previously expected.

For the main course I had decided to do chicken instead of red meat this time just for sake of mixing things up. I hadn't prepared my mother's famous teriyaki chicken this semester yet so I figured it was long over due. Normally my mother likes to prepare the chicken with hand cut potatoes seasoned in garlic, oil, and all kinds of seasonings and throw them in the oven to create homemade wedges or cubed fries kind of. But for sake of time and my terrible cutting skills I chose the easier route in frozen french fries. After marinading I seared the chicken in a cast iron skillet for 2-3 minuets to keep the marinade juices in then you just throw it in the oven for 15-20 minutes for the chicken to finish cooking in the oven. While the chicken was cooking I began to smell and taste the wine. I remember Professor Boyer saying that Sauvignon Blanc was a great wine to pair with chicken and it was even more fitting that I decided to get the Rex-Goliath bottle ($8, alch content 12%) with the big chicken on it. The wine wasn't very heavy on the nose, I wasn't able to pick up too many descriptors at all. I got mainly just green apple with a few hints of lime, pear, and even a little kiwi. The taste was quite refreshing, it reminded me of this homemade cider that my cousin once made and he let it ferment too long or something and it was a bad batch but for some reason this wine just triggered that in my memory which was pretty cool. As I believe I have stated that Sauvinon Blanc is my favorite white wine, this one doesn't disappoint. Once I started to eat the chicken with the wine is where it started to fall off the rails a little. I think I let the chicken marinade a little too long in the teriyaki, because it seemed a little to overpowering when tasting it with the wine. I feel that a plainly prepared grilled chicken would have fit this summertime fit wine a lot better than what I had paired it with. Nonetheless I continued to finish my meal and follow it with the wine as any good learning wine drinker should.

For dessert I decided to once again keep it simple and make some chocolate chip cookies. I will disclaim that I did NOT make these cookies from scratch but rather they are from the pre-cut and shaped Pillsbury collection. Why over complicate things and possibly mess them up when the good ol' Dough boy has been pumping them out for some 100 years. When I came up with idea of doing cookies for dessert I had no clue what kind of wine would go with them. Which actually made me stumble across this cool app called "Hello Vino" which helps you pair meals with wine and vise verse. I have since recommended it to my mom and aunt as if they don't drink any kind of wine with any meal anyway. I was a little skeptical pairing a dark red wine with cookies but the internet said otherwise. As backup I had a glass of milk nearby in case the warm cookie and wine combo was too much for me to handle haha. For my wine choice I went with the Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon ($4, alch content 13%). The nose on the wine quite rich and bold, I got black cherry, and black currant, along with a hint but not much of a licorice smell. The wine on the tongue was very smooth but after swallowing it left a very powerful kick in your mouth. I think the alcohol content is perfect for this wine, the flavors of the deep black cherry and even hints of a dark chocolate covered raspberry really complement this wine. And which to my surprise went very well with the chocolate from the cookies. I never thought I would be chasing cookies with wine by the end of this course but I'll be damned if I didn't just do that, and enjoy it. While I enjoyed the cookies and wine my roommates couldn't help but seem to wander out of their rooms to the smell of delightful cookies. I decided to make an experiment out of this and made them a bargain if they tried the cookies with the wine that I would let them have some of the cookies. And to my surprise one of them actually liked it! The other was a little reluctant and refused to continue to try it after just one bite and sip. I ended up finishing off the bottle of wine with the first roommate that enjoyed it and we watched American Sniper, which I highly recommend if you have yet to see it. Pretty good way to spend a Wine Wednesday night if you ask me!

5 Cheap Crazy Wines Over the Weekend

 I tried 3 wines this weekend while visiting my aunt in Charlotte along with 2 more that I had in my fridge once I got back Sunday. Once I told my aunt that I was in a wine tasting class she just thought that was the coolest thing since sliced bread and took the pictures of the wine in cart and texted them to me because she was anxious to finally drink wine with me (Hence the pictures in the shopping cart and in her purse because I forgot to take pictures of them when we were drinking them). For as long as I can remember my aunt has drank wine and was sort of surprised me when she just bought bottom shelf wines to taste. But none the less they were free so I was on board! The first wine was by FlipFlop and was the California Pinot Grigio ($3, alch content 12%). We first tasted the flip flop and it was very fruity on the nose with a light hint of ethanol or alcohol scent. The taste was a sugary floral taste, strong tastes of raspberry, strawberry, and a hint of cherry. It seemed like so much was going on in it that I couldn't even enjoy it, it had so much sweetness that really just seemed to overwhelm the fruit tastes that it had. Wasn't too big of a fan of this one.

 The wine next up was the Barefoot Pinot Grigio ($5, alch content 13%). This wine on the nose had hints of honey, lemon, citrus, and tart apple. The taste was almost exactly what I had smelled, it was a sweet yet tart taste, it gives you that same feeling when you bite into a really tart granny smith apple. The aftertaste was a sweet honey that I didn't care for at first but grew on me as it began to open up. My aunt didn't care for it but I liked it a lot more than the flip flop one. But enough with the pinot's and onto my favorite white wine.

 Sauginon Blanc is my favorite type of white wine, that I have tried so far in my brief wine tasting career. The last wine my aunt purchased was another wine from the very prestigious and highly sought after Barefoot winery. Their version of the Sauvignon Blanc ($5, alch content 13%). The initial nose on it was very light and only had hints of fruit not as overwhelming as the pinot's. The color was also a lighter and less yellow hue. The taste was tart for a sauvignon blanc that I wasn't used to tasting from most others, I got a lemon and light summer floral taste from this wine. It also felt like the taste you would get from most carbonated wines like champagne in the aftertaste that almost evaporated in your mouth. The lack of overwhelming sweetness really made this wine the winner for me. The dryness also took away from the 13% alcohol content and was quite pleasing. My favorite of all 5 wines tasted in this post.

These next two wines I purchased from the very bottom shelf of ghetto Kroger for pennies on the dollar and I soon found why they were as cheap as they were. The first to be tasted was the Bay Bridge Pinot Grigio ( $3, alch content 11.5%), unique to this wine is that it is made of 51% Pinot Grigio and 49% Colombard grapes which changes the characteristics of this wine dramatically. And sure enough it had a more refreshing less sweet nose to it. This pinot is nothing like the other in that it has less sweetness and is more dry. I honestly enjoyed this wine in the long run better than the sweeter ones because I don't enjoy very sweet wines. But one characteristic that was terrible was the alcohol content, this wine tasted like I was drinking water, I very sublimely got just a plain old grape taste, like I drank an entire glass trying to come up with more descriptors but it was just so bland that I couldn't come up with any haha.

The last wine of the week was the Bay Bridge version of Chardonnay ($3, alch content 12.5%). This wine was 100% Chardonnay, or atleast if it wasn't they didn't mention it anywhere on the bottle. This wine had a little darker greener color than the previous. It however was not as watery as the previous Bay Bridge. On the nose it was dry and smelled like a passion fruit. On the tongue it tasted of strong pineapple and pear, with hints of lemon and apple. The first taste you get is all pineapple and apple and then the aftertaste is like a tartness followed by pear left in your mouth after you taste it. The only thing that makes me not love this wine is it tastes like it's been open for a while and gotten stale or something it was quite strange. I've never had a wine that I opened and sit for only 30 minuets while I took a shower that tasted like that. I really don't know if it was the wine or me letting it breathe for a little. I would like to buy this bottle again and try it immediately after opening it to compare results.

Wine Dinner #1

This past week my friend Andrew in the class wanted to meet up and do a wine pairing with a meal, of course I agreed and he had another friend that was going to cook the main meal and we only had to bring appetizers and a dessert. Not a bad deal. So Andrew and I hit the grocery store and picked up some french onion dip and celery for our appetizer. I brought a Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 Vintage from McManis Vineyards in California. purchased for $7, with a 13.5% alcohol content. We made a mistake by not purchasing wines that pair well with the appetizer or dessert. But as dude's that aren't picky we didn't complain haha. The wine was very good, it was very full bodied, fruity aroma, with cranberry, cherry, and a hint of bitter raspberry. It was like the perfect amount of flavors to match the alcohol content. Hands down my favorite wine of the night and since then have purchased another two bottles.

    For the main course my friends friend Will, prepared London Broil with mashed potatoes and to my surprise no veggies. Not a problem because I'm not a huge fan. The mashed potatoes weren't too great considering they were from a box. But the steak was great, he had marinated it in Mushrooms and in the Night Harvest wine that we paired with it. The wine really broke down the steak and soaked into it creating a juicy sauce with each bite. The Night Harvest wine ($5 and 14% alcohol content) and  was a watered down version of the McManis. It was my least favorite of the wines of the evening. It had a great nose, fruity, light, and a brighter color than the previous Cab. But the taste was just not there, it was watery with little boldness, and the alcohol content pierced through any attempt there was at flavor and just had a vicious bite. It did however complement the steak a little, the taste of the meat made up for the lack luster wine performance.

The final course for the night was vanilla ice cream with chopped up fresh strawberries. I am a Riesling fan but was a little disappointed with the Crane Lake ( $7, alcohol content 13% ). While cutting the strawberries we smelled the wine and had a before taste test. It smelled like it was going to be a great riesling with a honey and citrus nose. The taste was an over the top sweetness and acid with hints of lemon, lime, peach, and a honey aftertaste. The alcohol content was the only thing bringing it together. Once we ate some of the delightfully ripe strawberries and ice cream, we took a second taste and we were blown away. The sweetness from the dessert made our palates open up and able to taste wine from a different perspective. With our mouths coated with sugar we were able to get past the sweetness of the wine and I began to get more flavors such as pear and pineapple. It was cool to see how a wine can open your palate that much and was my first experience having the taste of a wine paired with food change so much. Totally cool experience that eating ice cream can make alcohol taste better!!!