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!)

Tasting- Blackberry Merlot

Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot
--Merlot with Blackberry Flavors 
--New York 
--USA 
--2008
--$5

I realize this is not real wine but the battle that is trying to get my boyfriend to drink wine, when he picks something I have to allow it. He's a big cider person so this naturally appealed to him, what appealed to me was that it was not just a wine cooler or anything but actually had real wine in it. 

Notes on the bottle: Refreshing new way to enjoy wine. A delicous blend of full bodied Merlot wine and natural blackberry flavor makes this an ideal veverage for casual dining, festive celegra5ions and quiet evenings at home. 

My notes: Definitely not bought for quality but for why not. It was carbonated and all blackberry, naturally. The color was ruby red, so you know it didn't have a lot of body. The smell was all fruit, which was to be expected. It was fruity but when you got past the carbonation and just let it sit you got the Merlot deep taste. Not as sweet as I was expecting, thankfully. Despite the really low alcohol (6% which makes sense because it's half wine) you could still notice the kick merlot sometimes has with a slight bite. It seemed like a great outdoor picnic wine, it did taste like a good wine cooler. 

So no I will probably not buy this wine again but hey the boy liked it and anything to get him to drink wine is good with me. 

(pictures to come)

Tasting- Dr Heidemanns-Bergweiler Riesling

Dr. Heidemanns-Bergweiler Riesling
--Riesling
--Mosel
--Germany
--2012
--$12

Winemaker notes: This full-bodied Dry Riesling is a typical wine for the German market. Just very few wines in dry German Riesling Style get exported to the US. The Dr. Heidemanns-Bergweiler Dry Riesling is one of the best selling Dry German Rieslings in the US-market

Wine Description:
The wine has a refreshing and irrepressible aroma that exudes significant power, emerging with the bouquet of violets when exposed to air. The taste is marked by a distinctive acidity. It shows great potential as an easily drinkable table wine.

My notes: So this was my cooking wine I bought for the Reisling Pear salad dressing I made for my wine-dinner pairing (see previous blog post). I figured that a cooking wine, I might as well taste! The smell was peachey apple. Which I was expecting so not unusual. The other smells were fresh air almost spring but it was a tropical fresh smell, very interesting and different. The mouth feel was smooth, you could taste the apple and pear too which was good since I was using it with a pear salad. It was just light and basic. Exactly what you would expect from a Riesling with a slight tropic mid-palate. I was happy becasue it was exactly what I expected. Not much else, good for a cooking and it was great in the salad dressing. Light and not overpowering. So succesful for what I needed. 

Cheese Pairing/Dinner Pairing

So at first I was going to separate these two events but the problem with a big family and lots of activities the only time we had time to do this together. And by the end of the meal we had mixed all the wines trying different pairings and with an 18th month old niece, we also had to slightly rush. But it was a fun crazy evening with lots of good food and lots a great wine.  Luckily my older sister and her husband (and her gorgeous daughter who did cheerios and a Kale smoothie pairings all night) came over and helped my parents and I taste! I'm so lucky to have a family that is always so excited to help me with my homework.

Good food and good company

First we did cheese and wine pairings for appetizers.

The Parings: 

The wine and cheese pairings 

--Coastline 2011 Monterey, CA Chardonnay with a basic Mild Brie 
--French Domaine de la Presidente Rose Rosa Rosam paired with a Sharp White Cheddar 
--2011 Corvallis Cellars Pino Noir, Oregon, paired with a Medium Gouda

The Coastline Chardonnay was a favorite of my moms, so we have some of it. However the first Coastline we opened was dark colored and disgusting. The second bottle was a little better but overall it seemd extremely oaky. It did slightly enhanced brie and the brie helped a little to decrease the oakey extremity. This pairing could have been better if it had just been a bettery Chardonnay, we're thinking a bad case with this one.

The Rose was the surprise of the evening. My mom likes a basic wine without too many fruity flavors and definitely needs to be dry. So this was a hit and definitely noted as a good light wine for the summer. The Rose and cheddar had a apricot taste but overall not fruity. Kind of earthy it was just light and fresh. It went pretty well with the cheddar since it just blended smoothy. The wine became subtle but a good subtle that brought out the flavor of the cheese. Just overall great experience

The Gouda and the Pinot Noir was the best of the cheese and wine tasting. They balanced each other very nicely. The Pinot took the bitterness out of the Gouda, which is a harsh cheese. It made it almost light and soft. The wine definitely did more for the cheese than the cheese did for the wine. The fruitness of the wine was actually masked by the Gouda. What was interesting for me is that my mom does not really drink red wine at all, however with the cheese she could only see herself drinking the pinot but also she could not drink the pinot without the gouda.

Wine and Cheese sampling 

Our 3 dinner wines for the evening 

Then we moved onto a basic 3 course dinner. 
The Dinner Pairings: 
--2011 Ventana Riesling from Monterey, CA with a Spinch, Pear and Green Been Salad.
--Sausages and Grapes with the 2014 Myanmar Shirax 
--Zucchini Linguine with a 2013 Austrian Gruner Veltliner

Salad with homemade salad dressing

--2011 Ventana Riesling from Monterey, CA with a Spinch, Pear and Green Been Salad. It also had a blue cheese and walnuts which was great. The best part about this salad was the Reisling dressing that the recipe had me make. It had diced pear, Riesling, lemon juice, shallot and Dijon mustard. It was a big hit and overall the salad paired so well with the wine. Not only because there was Reisling in it. My sister actually thought that would hurt it and make it too much Reisling. However it was not overpowering and did not seem as sweet as reslings sometimes can appear. The salad made the wine actually come off as a little heavier than normal, which in this case was great. It makes the wine bold. My family does not drink a lot of Reislings, usually we hate it due to its sometimes sweet and too fruity taste and this actually needs the salad to cut it. 

The Sausage and Grape Dish
My brother in law and my dad ate it all
before I could snap a picture

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/spinach-pear-and-green-bean-salad-with-riesling-dressing-15660

--Next we did Sausages and Grapes with the 2014 Myanmar Shirax that I had brought back from Myanmar (and had previously blogged about). First off I did not realize how spicy the sausage I had bought was. So it was very spicy. And this was a recipe I wish I had tried earlier so I would known this and the way to balance it out would be to put more grapes in it.
The wine was the big hit because the wine was great, not becuase it was a good pairing. Basically this was the wine people kept coming back too after the pairings were done.
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/sausages-with-grapes

The Zucchini and Linguine

--The final part of our pairings was the Zucchini Linguine with a 2013 Austrian Gruner Veltliner, which I have been really excited to try since we learned about it in class. This wine brought out the herbs in the linguine. The dish was a very herby, lemon zest, light dish. So the wine just was smooth with it. The wine seemed slightly carbonated and fixxer than a pinot grigio. This linguine was great just as a light but filling meal, it would be great in the summer. Especially with this wine pairing, we would talking about how good it would be on our patio in the summer. http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/zucchini-linguine-with-herbs

My mom enjoying Rose

What was intersting was at the end of the night my dad, being that guy, decided to try some other pairings and the main one he did was the Gouda with the Myanmar wine. He was thinking since the Myanmar wine was close to the Pinot it would be okay, he was very wrong. The Shirax had too much of a bite and it contrasted with the Gouda too much.

According to my family, the dinner pairings went better than the cheese pairings, which I also think becasue the wines that I picked for the dinner were just better wines (outside of the Rose). The chardonney was the biggest disappointment but probably because of a bad case.

This whole experiment proved to not only myself but to my whole family that wine pairings really do change your meal and your wine. We are a family of do you want white or red? My dad drinks all red, all the time and my mom drinks white all the time. That was part of why I picked these choices, I wanted to make my family try new things and go outside their comfort zone. At first they were spectical pink wine but then they learned that real French Roses are actually extremely dry and then none of my family had heard of Gruner Veltiner. So that was fun to try all these new things.

My niece Vivian telling us about her pairings for the evening

We found wines we would have never picked up on our own that just blended so well and was so amazing with the right food. Everyone was blown away not only by the food but the wine and how well they complemented each other.


What I learned: I can in fact plan an entire meal AND cook it. Also pairing wines is not hard, it just takes some basic rules and you can make amazing choices that blow people away.

I promise I was there! (in plaid) I cooked everything!

Tasting-Ventana Gewurztraminer

Ventana GEWÜRZTRAMINER
--Gewürztraminer
--Arroyo Seco 
--Monterey, California 
--2010
--$13

This is my family's favorite vineyard (or was apparently my dad has not been impressed with the past couple of vintages). My parents met in Monterey so I think that helps as well, also that Ventana is just known for great wine. My parents are wine club members and so occasionally they get a bunch of bottles of something. Since we learned about this grape in class I was intrigued to try it. Best part about being home: my parents have fantastic taste in wine. 

TASTING NOTES: Ventana models its Gewürztraminer in the off-dry Alsatian Style. With flavor characteristics of litchis, orange blossoms, cinnamon and nutmeg spices, it exudes a lively bouquet. The wine is medium bodied with a lingering crisp spicy finish. The off-dry style matches beautifully with food. Try Gewürztraminer with mild creamy cheeses, spicy Asian cuisine, pork dishes and poultry, especially turkey

My notes: BAM hello flowers and fruit, was the first thing I smelled. I did not even have to put my nose in the glass to get that wiff. As I attempted to move past that smell, I noticed some apricot (maybe it was more orange looking at what I should have noticed), definitely some Oak, but no Oak monster. There were touches of Rose which intrigued me. Overall it had a very gorgeous golden color to it, that since I have never had this grape, should not suprise me that I had never seen. The taste was hard to find because at first all I noticed was a buzz and a tingle, almost carbonation feel. You could only notice the alochol (which is only 13.7 not that high). Then the spice came in though I would describe it more as a bite. It had a slight champagne taste to it, maybe it was the fact that it almost seemed carbonated or what but it reminded me a lot of champagne. There were touches of apricot and overall light ffeeling. The final pallete was almost like a classic white grape juice taste on the tongue, just not sweet.

It reminded me slightly a dry muscat, which we usually get an Orange Muscat  from Ventana. The flowery smell and taste reminded me of a Rose. So I would put it between a desert wine and a rose for overall feeling and taste of the wine.

Tasting-Schug Pinot Noir

Schug Pinot Noir 
--100% Pinot Noir 
--Sonoma Coast, California
--USA
--2012
--$19.99

Winemaker's Notes

This 100% Pinot Noir cuvee is from grapes grown within the cool microclimate of the Sonoma Coast AVA, on select vineyards in the western portion of Carneros and the Petaluma Gap. The cool windy climate and low yield of these vineyards allow Pinot Noir grapes to mature slowly while retaining their natural acidity, with bright flavors of red cherries, raspberries and spice. We showcase the elegant side of Pinot Noir by aging in large neutral oak casks and older French oak barrels to keep new oak flavors to a minimum. Lively acidity on the finish makes it an ideal accompaniment to grilled fish and fowl or barbecued meats.

My Notes: 

Another Dad pick! Thankfully significantly cheaper so I don't feel guilty for not being in love. There was a subtle smell of Blackberry and chocolate, which is probably my favorite fruit and chocolate combination so that was exciting. The taste was just a classic Pinot with slight chocolate, some sort of berry (reading the description maybe I was wrong about the blackberry). It had a smooth taste and almost no sting of alcohol which seemed odd for a red. A good pinot but nothing different just a smooth, good classic pinot noir. Exactly what you would expect from a well priced California wine. 

Tasting-Silver Oak

Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon
--A Bordeaux blend of 86% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot.
--Alexander Valley, California
--USA
--2004
--$84.99


Yep that price is real-no I did not spend that much on wine. I came home for Spring Break and my dad told me this is a great wine I need to try. When I saw the year, it seemed like it could be interesting. Good aged red wine that my dad has had for a while. I looked up the price today. I don't think he paid that, I think he got it as a gift or from a Wine Club subscription. 

Winemaker's Notes

The 2004 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is a complex and elegant wine that balances the expression of fruity and savory elements with finesse. The wine has a dark ruby color with a purple edge and displays aromas of black plum, soy sauce, chocolate, rose petals, cedar and black olive. It has a soft, velvety attack and a fruity, floral and spicy mid-palate. The finish is long and smooth with well integrated tannins. Properly cellared, this wine should give drinking pleasure through 2024.

My notes: 

There was a plum and caramel smell that was very intriguing. Overall there was not anything super strong or distinct about the smell-it was subtle and inviting though. It had a great body and was very smoothed. You could tell that it had been aged due to tannis. There was a slight mocha taste and then an underlying metal taste, that kind of through me off. It ended with a little earthy feel and taste. We had it with Lobster Macroni and Cheese and it paired nicely. The plum came out more along with a chocolate fruit taste. As it airrated more there fruit came out and a subtle sweetness which brought a little bit more caramel. Pretty solid. However it had a lot of sediment in the glass at the end which turned me off. 

According to my family who had the 2010 vintage the previous night was much better so maybe age did not help this wine as much as they want.