This Christmas season, we planned to make some mulled wine for Christmas Eve. Many of my readers know how much I like Trader Joe’s and they just happened to carry a juice called Winter Wassail. This seemed like a familiar word I’d heard in a Christmas carol but what does it mean? According to Wikipedia, the house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts. Well that sounds fun! And it was so easy, we just had to add some red wine and warm it up!
Have you ever tried wine in a can? We were at Trader Joe’s and came across this one by Underwood, http://unionwinecompany.com. We first saw it a couple months back and wondered how it might be? After passing it during our weekly grocery trips, we finally decided to pick up a can to try it. Only one can you ask? Well, it was $6 per can so we figured we could split one and have enough for a tasting. Our cheese, Wensleydale, is a holiday favorite of ours so we decided it was time to get some. We guessed that the cranberries in the cheese would pair nicely with the light berry flavor of a pinot noir. So without further ado, Pinot Noir and Wensleydale Cheese.
The Fearless Flyer came in the mail from Trader Joe’s (http://traderjoes.com) and we instantly found what we’d be bringing to Thanksgiving. There was not only a magnum of Prosecco but a chèvre coated in cranberries, done! We’ve had really good luck with the quality of wines and cheeses there and buy them pretty often. We had never tried this Prosecco or cheese before but they looked so tasty and great for the holiday!
During our time in Florida, we’ve been on a search for a place to buy some lesser known wines. A friend in the wine industry suggested, West Palm Wines, http://www.westpalmwines.com, in Ybor City. We finally had a chance to get over to Tampa, since we don’t have a car, to check out the store. It was exactly what we were looking for, I didn’t know any of the wines! After about an hour of searching and roaming around, I spoke with Mark, the owner, to learn about some of the the wines. We talked about their large collection of Sicilian wines, rosés and old world wines.
It’s hard to believe it’s been over a month since Neil and I did a WineAndCheese pairing together! The wine we’ll be tasting this week is the final wine from our Sommly.io order at the end of 2015. Many of the wines we ordered had an earthy/slate flavor profile to them so we thought this one might too. This past weekend we were pleasantly surprised to end up at a gourmet food shop, Locale Market, http://www.localegourmetmarket.com, and figured we might as well pick up some cheese while we were there. It was so much fun being in the presence of all that cheese! Neil and I identified the ones we’ve tried and the handful of others we had not. The main quality we were looking for was "out of the ordinary." When we smelled the tomme crayeuse, we thought of a moldy basement and it looked pretty haggard also. It was exactly what we wanted. So without further ado, the pairing of Cà del Vént and Tomme Crayeuse.
Join Chris Fiore from Wine School 101 (http://www.wineschool101.com) and Maria Ferraro Beardsley from WineAndCheeseFriday (https://wineandcheesefriday.com) as they discuss Wine, Cheese and how they both got into the industry! It’s a great conversation complete with Wine and Cheese tasting notes, Italians talking with their hands, and Neil fielding tech and chat questions. Hope you enjoy the fun too!