The top weather/news story here in Florida this week is Hurricane Hermine. And, playing off this theme, we chose a wine called Class 5 Hurricane. Lucky for us, Hurricane Hermine was barely a hurricane at only class one and did very little damage where we are staying, but still a fun way to build on our current Florida experience. This wine is made by Florida Orange Groves Winery, http://floridawine.com, that uses “untraditional” fruits for winemaking. Their tagline is, “Finally! Wines that taste good”! Although many of you reading the blog would typically choose wines made from grapes, join us in this fun break from tradition.
This week’s WineAndCheeseFriday was inspired by a bottle of wine from New York. Our neighbor Val’s mom had been saving this bottle from near where she grew up, and decided to give it to Val to see how she liked it. The bottle of wine was from Merritt Winery (http://www.merrittestatewinery.com) in the Lake Erie Wine Region. Knowing that wine region and it’s tendency to be sweet wine, we planned to have some savory snacks to balance it all. Val had a different idea, she though we should have some cheesecake with the wine, which I wouldn’t say no to, so we ended up having both sweet and savory snacks. When Val was picking up the snacks at Publix, she came across another bottle of sweet wine from San Sebastian Winery in Florida (http://www.sansebastianwinery.com) to bring along. She also brought a friend along, Jessica, to join in the fun. We decided to share the wine fun with our other neighbor, Amanda, so there were 5 of us in total. This is a slightly different group but our second time all getting together for a wine tasting (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/135469941803/gouda-goat-cheese-with-chardonnay-and-grenache). And now onto the shenanigans!
This week we chose a wine from our recent trip to Rosa Fiorelli Winery (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/102075609983/a-visit-back-to-rosa-fiorelli-winery-bradenton). And the cheese really has us wondering, a goat milk Brie, http://cheese.about.com/od/frenchcheeses/p/Goat-Brie.htm. Can’t wait to get into that one! I mentioned this pairing at work before I left one day and had others excited about it too, so without further ado, Aurora Muscadine wine and Goat milk Brie.
This week we will try a Florida wine from our recent trip. The wine is produced by a family owned vineyard, Rosa Fiorelli Winery. (Www.fiorelliwinery.com). This also happens to be the winery Maria worked for before moving out to California.