On a Friday night a few of our friends got together to have a little potluck dinner with some wine. We ended up having a ton of both wine and food and it was a great to have after a hike that we did at Angels' Rest, which overlooks Pearisburg, Virginia. We asked everyone to bring a side dish as well as a wine to try and we came up with some good combinations as well as some that may have been better off not being put together.
This is a picture of our little spread that we had created. There was a rice salad called "Pebble Salad" that was long grain rice with cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots with a light dressing on top. We also had some home made three cheese pizza, zucchini bread, homemade spicy buffalo hummus, a platter of four different kinds of cheese, which were Pepperjack, cheddar, white cheddar and American cheese. Some one brought fried mac and cheese bites that were hard to keep around long enough to actually pair with the wines because they were so good! One of our least talented cooks brought some Texas Toast, which was also a very good decision. For desserts, there were some brownies as well as some sugar cookies. Now for the wines that we had:
The first one we had was Borsao Berola and was a mix of 70% Grenache, 20% Syrah and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon. I thought that it was very dry at first and was jammy. It was very cherry with plums and lots of dark berries. I thought that it was very mellow considering how dark it was. I tasted this wine with the three cheese pizza and it did not really go as well with that because the pizza and the wine both had so many flavors going on. I also tried it with some of the hummus and crackers as well as some of the cheddar cheese and that paired very nicely with them because of how dry the wine was. The wine also went well with the zucchini bread and the brownies because the chocolate and cherries combined nicely as well as the sweetness that took away some of the dryness from the wine. I think this wine would also go well with a nice piece of meat such as a steak because of how bold it is. The food we had was not necessarily as bold as it should have been to be able to pair this wine perfectly. It was one of the most complex wines that I have tried and I was impressed with it!
The next wine that we tried was Norton from Horton Vineyards, which is a native Virginia Red. When just tasting this wine alone, it was extremely dark, as you can tell from the dripping lines down the bottle and actually smelled like cleaning solution. I think that it needed some time to breathe before I tasted it, but we did not give it enough time. It had an earthy chemical taste and had a very high tannic structure with higher acidity. I tasted some plums in it as well. When pairing it with food, it went really well with the brownies because of the chocolate component. It is a very bold and dry wine so the sweetness of the brownie brought out more of the flavors in the wine instead of tasting the high acidity and tannic structure.
The third wine that we tasted was Fisheye Chardonnay. This was the only white wine that we had with this dinner and it paired nicely with food. It was very light and peachy with some hints of apricot. Tasting it alone was not as good but it went really well with the rice salad because the salad was fairly light but also had a lot of flavors that softened the acidity in the Chardonnay a little. It also went well with the pizza because the pizza was so bold with the three cheeses that it lightened that as well. I think this is a very good summer wine to go with dinners sitting outside overlooking a lake or something because it is a cheap wine but is very refreshing and pairs nicely with a lot of different types of food.
Our first wine dinner was a success and I think there was a good time had by all. We had a full table of food and everyone contributed not only food and wine, but lots of laughs as well. I learned that I am not a huge fan of Chardonnay unless it is paired with some type of food that lowers the acidity a little. I am excited to have our next wine dinner and see what other combinations we can come up with and of course to taste some more great wine!
No comments:
Post a Comment