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.