Wine and Cheese Pairing #2

Wine & Cheese Pairing: #2 !!

The other night, my friends and I decided to do our second wine and cheese pairing. We loved the first one so much and had such a great time, so putting everything together for this one was really fun. We wanted to get a variety of different wines and cheeses like we did for the first one, but obviously wanted different flavors and pairings, so we did a little bit of research before we made our final decisions. My roommate Gaby brought home wine from Texas again, which was awesome because we were able to get pretty decent wines for a really decent price. The wines that we decided on were:

1) Scaia Garganega/Chardonnay blend 2014

 2) Poppy Pinot Noir 2016

3) Josh Red Blend 2015

 I thought that these wines were good choices because all three of the wines we chose to use (Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Franc) were all varietal wines, while two of these are blends (one white and one red).

The cheeses we ended up using were a camembert, sharp white cheddar, and blue. We paired the camembert with the chardonnay blend, the the cheddar with the Pinot Noir, and the red blend with blue cheese.  We also added some rosemary flavored crackers, put it all together on a platter, and it turned out to be so pretty :')

As we did for the first wine and cheese pairing, we wanted to move from lightest to heaviest wines, so we started out with the white blend and moved right, ending with the red blend.

I was really excited to try the white blend for a couple different reasons. The first was because it was a chardonnay from Italy. I am notorious for picking a good, oaky, California chardonnay so I was curious so see how the blend from Italy and the earlier vintage would differ. The body of the wine was very interesting because it was a little bit lighter than some buttery chardonnays that I've had before, but for a fruitier wine it was a little bit more on the full side. I loved that there was a sweet, fruity aspect of it, with a little bit of a green apple aftertaste. The crispness of the garganega definitely balanced out the honey, apricot, maybe pineapple tastes of the chardonnay. The creaminess of the camembert also balanced out the wine very well, and brought out more tropical fruit flavors like pineapple.

As I have mentioned before, I am just now starting to love red wines. I've like them before but I would always choose a white over a red. I think that Pinot Noir, being a lighter, more fruity, red, has been a good stepping stone towards other big reds such as Cabernet Sauvignon. Needless to say, I was really excited to try a new Pinot Noir. Poppy was absolutely incredible for that reason. It was very light for a red wine, and very fruity. It had strong aromas of raspberry, cherry, and maybe some pomegranate, with a very strong spicy aftertaste of toasted cinnamon and a little pepper. If I had to guess I would assume that poppy was aged in a toasted barrel. I loved this wine because it had all the fruity components that I love and am comfortable with, with a presence of the spice of bigger wines that I am moving towards liking more and more, and the two components combined together to form an excellent mouth feel. It paired very well with the cheddar cheese; the sharpness of the cheddar balanced well with the fruitiness of the Pinot, and brought out a little bit of a floral flavor, maybe like violets or hibiscus.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect going into the Josh Red Blend, because I am not so familiar with differences between bigger reds. I knew that I would most likely be surprised by the combinations of flavors, but I was completely shocked at how much I loved this red. There was a light presence of bright red fruits like raspberry and pomegranate, with a stronger presence of darker fruits like blackberry and black cherry, and also notes of spices like clove and toasted hazelnuts. The body was more full than the Pinot Noir and was relatively dry, however the slight fruitiness balanced it really well. Pairing the blend with blue cheese was an excellent decision because the creaminess of the blue cancelled out some of the tannins in the wine, which gave it a little bit of a lighter feel.

Doing these wine and cheese pairings are so much fun, I would do five of them if I could get credit for them all :)