Wine dinner!

So this is a very exciting post, readers (my TA).  This post combines my two favorite things:  booze and food.  I got together a few weeks ago with my dear friends Grace and Chris, who are also in this class.  We call Chris "CFE".  Its a long story but it is too strange to call him Chris so I will refer to him as CFE from here on out.  Now, back to the wine and the food.  Grace was in charge of the appetizer and the aperitif, I cooked the entree and picked a wine for that, and CFE made dessert and picked out a dessert wine.  Also, my roommate and best friend, Mandy, joined us last minute because she was hungry but is not in this class.  She provided color commentary throughout the evening.

Let's begin with Grace's appetizer.  She brought a cheese plate with many different selections and a sparkling rose to begin.  This is Grace opening the Ballatore Spumante Rosso, with a bar towel of course. 

7 half turns

nailed it. 

 

The Ballatore offered a sweet tingly nose with the aroma of raspberries.  The taste was very sweet but with refreshing bubbles.  I pick up raspberry and cherry.  Definitely on the sweeter side, but it is really nice and dangerous because it basically tastes like Strawberry Fanta.  When things that are alcoholic don't taste like alcohol, I usually get into trouble.  

Grace paired this bubbly with a really nice cheese plate featuring goat cheese, smoked gouda, white cheddar, an aged gouda, and some pepper jack just for shits and giggles.  The white cheddar was very sharp with medium hardness.  It paired well with the wine because the sweetness of the wine cut the saltiness of the cheddar.  The same is true of the aged gouda, which was probably my favorite cheese on the platter.  It had a bit of a Parmesan salty character and was very hard.  The salt balanced out the sweet very well in the wine.  The smoked gouda was softer and tasted smoky and meaty.  Almost as if I were eating hickory smoked ham cold cuts.  But the smokiness of this cheese tempered the sweetness of the Ballatore, making it seem very delicate.  Although it wasn't my favorite cheese or wine, the pairing of the smoked gouda and spumante rosso worked the best.  Lastly, goat cheese isn't really my cup of tea, but it is soft and creamy and almost buttery.  The creaminess of the goat cheese made the sparkler seem significantly more acidic in comparison.  Overall, this was a really interesting experiment and I enjoyed all of the cheeses.  

Mandy's notes after the appetizer: "All good in my book"

So since Grace is a vegetarian and CFE usually doesn't eat meat, I made a Mediterranean spaghetti with a bunch of vegetables.  I roasted red peppers and zucchini and sauteed spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, and onion in red wine vinegar and garlic.  I added fresh basil, lemon juice, kalamata olives, and feta cheese and tossed it with angel hair pasta.  It turned out to be really tasty.  The vinegar and olives gave it some tartness, but the red pepper flakes and black pepper definitely gave it a bit of spice.  To pair with this spicy Greek dish, I chose a Rosemount 2011 Shiraz/Cabernet blend from South Australia.  The Rosemount Shiraz is one of our best selling wines in the restaurant I work at over the summer, so I figured I couldn't go wrong.  We let it decant for only ten minutes before trying it.  The nose offers dark fruit like plum and black cherry, but with a nice spice. The taste was a little unbalanced.  It felt a little too hot and acidic with not enough sweetness or fruit to overcompensate.  I think decanting it for an hour would have let it open up more and soften.  

Grace, CFE, and I trying to get a sniffy sniff

After eating some of the pasta, the Rosemount tasted a little less acidic and offered some complexity.  The spice I smelled in the nose was very much present.  It seemed a little more herbal with some possible eucalyptus coming through.  It was interesting that the pasta with its tartness and spice, brought out the tartness and spice of the wine.  Also, Mandy brought some garlic rosemary bread to eat with the pasta which was delicious. 

Mandy's notes after the entree:  "So stoked.  We are gonna have so many leftovers."

Finally, CFE decided to make a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.  He picked out a German off-dry Riesling to go with it.  The nose was pretty typical of most Rieslings I have had, with notes of pear and apple coming through.  The taste was really much more complex though.  It was slightly sweet with notes of citrus, watermelon, and honey.  I really enjoyed the dessert wine on its own.  


  

The pineapple upside-down cake was also really good on its own.  The yellow cake was moist and the topping was basically caramelized sugar and pineapple so it was very sweet.  The sweetness of the cake actually turned this fairly sweet wine a little drier and more acidic.  The combination worked very well as one echoed the other as you ate and drank more.  




Mandy's notes after dessert:  "I need some milk"

So after the entire dinner, I learned that wine really is food.  Each pairing worked in its own way; whether it was to counteract the flavors of the food or to echo those flavors.  I am reminded of Europe, where wine was served with every lunch and dinner as a standard part of the flavors of the meal.  But most of all, it was nice to have a marathon dinner with people you enjoy in order to compare palates and talk about my two favorite things:  food and booze.  Here is a final line-up of our wines:

Mandy's (and everybody's) sentiment after the wine dinner: "I need a nap"