Wine and Cheese Pairing

On Sunday I was able to hang out with some of my friends in this class and do a White Wine and Cheese Pairing

The Wines and Cheeses we paired:
Fat Bastard Chardonnay-Cheddar
Green Eyes Gruner Veltiner- Mozzarella
Chateau Puy Servain- Goat Cheese

Fat Bastard- 2012
Rhone Valley, France

Quote on bottle
"we don't know where the hippo came from" 

This wine won for the best description ever- see the picture below with the back label. The smell of the wine was buttery and not tart (which we learned we do not like), it was fruity but not in the face with slight hints of apricot and peach and almost a grassy smell. It had a great smooth texture to it, a classi buttery chardonnay taste. What was interesting is there was no fruit taste at all. It had a slight rock and flinty aspect. With the Cheddar Cheese, it became extremely less acidic and it almost watered down the wine. We joked that it almost like an "Anti Jesus" (get it Wine to Water?) The cheese really became a great combination for this wine because it made the wine go down a lot easier. It had the cheese on a buttery cracker which we found made the Chardonnay taste like more what we expected of a Chardonnay.






Next we tried to make an inform decision and based on our sniffing we thought the Semillion would be best option for the next wine because it seemed less sweet (we found out we were wrong and this should have been the last one we tried)


Chataeua Puy Servain Semillon- 2012 
Montravel, France
-This had a very weird smell at first. Camp Fire possible. burnt hay, very alcoholic. It was odd. And then a little citrus and lime came out. The taste though, was extremely sweet. Sweet and Syrupy. There was all honey suckle and honey comb. If you swished in your mouth you got a little acidity. It felt and tasted like a sweet orange muscat with a slight pear.




With the Goat Cheese it became actually a little more tart, less acidic and actually seemed to descrease in the heavey feeling. The cheese brought out a lot of flavors and added complexity to the wine. It was also better with the buttery cracker. It did become a more moscato like wine with the cracker though.

What was interesting for us about this wine was that it was sweet but not sickening sweet. It was extremely close to a Moscato but you could drink more than a moscato. We learned quickly though that the smell was misleading and this was actually a very sweet wine (which we wish we would have known)





Green Eyes 2012 Gruner Veltliner 
Austria 

This was another wine, that after learning about this in class I wanted to try (and I had with my dinner pairing but now cheese!). It had an odd clearish color. The smell was very tart at first and then a slight lime/lemon test but honestly there was not smell at the end. It was odd. The taste was very earthy and flowerly. But a specific flowerly-almost like the stem, kind of more plantlike flower growth taste. The tart came across almost like carbonation too. It was very dry, dryer than expected. This was one where the smell really prelude to the taste, it was tart in the smell and then very tart in taste. 

The good Mozzarella (thank you Eats) did a great job cutting the tartness and working wonderfully with it. It had almost Chardonney tendencies with the cheese. Thought we decided that this would actually be better with food because it needed more than just cheese to go with it. 

Once again we wish we would have done this 2nd and the Semillon last but honestly the smells just kind of confused us and did not prepare us for the actual taste of it. We believe having the sweet one first kind of hurt us here. 

Post tastings/cheese pairings. 

Nicole and Melina! 

Me and Melina (whose auditing and just here for the fun!)