Renee began her wine life in a small Michigan winery. Once she was able to return to St Croix she was ready to open her own wine endeavor. She’d source the juice from California vineyards and then make the wine here on the island. They purchased a place in downtown and the wheels were in motion until the pandemic hit. That didn’t stop them though, there was enough room to make wine, prepare small plates and do tastings, right?
We’ve been drinking Cono Sur wines, since we first found them in Ecuador in 2016. After trying a few bottles then, we became fans. Then I found out about the #conosurwinetalk chat on Twitter, . It was there that I first heard about Ocio. People from around the world would come together for that chat so many of the different labels by the brand would be mentioned. I remember hearing about the upper level wine during one of those first chats and thinking, “Wow, that sounds like some nice Pinot Noir! How can I get my hands on a bottle?”
This wine and cheese pairing began with a cheese. We first tasted the lavender goats’ milk gouda cheese in the Amsterdam Cheese and Liquor Store in Sint Maarten. They surprised us by mentioning that Gouda cheese can be stored for up to 6 weeks unrefrigerated since it is a hard cheese. That was all we needed to hear; we purchased multiple wedges of Gouda cheese to bring back to the US with us. The lavender cheese would be used in a future pairing and the rest would be souvenirs for family. Yeah, we consider cheese a souvenir ?
This weeks wine choice was inspired by a recent twitter chat about Hungarian wine. Since I had heard of Tokaji but never tried it, Mark at West Palm Wines suggested we taste this dry Tokaji called The Oddity. How could I resist? And speaking of oddities, we found this Potato Chip Gouda at Cheese Please. Although it sounds quite strange, it’s one of their best sellers and it's a type of Gouda. What an obvious choice for us! I suppose we were playing off the “out of the ordinary” theme for this entry because we took our tasting notes at 1am on the last night in our house. Now that’s a great reason to have Wine And Cheese!
Neil went out of town for work at the end of January so I figured that’d be a great time to have my neighbor Valerie over for some wine! We’ve done a few wine tastings together* and it’s always a fun time! She usually likes white wines so I thought this Rhône Blend would be something new for her to try. (Sadly, this wine is our final one from our Christmas present at West Palm Wines.) Without looking at the label, I gave her some varietals that would be in the wine and she set out to find some foods to pair with it. She was really into it and found the appropriate cheeses, fruits and even snack mix to complement the wine. Her research pointed her to Gouda, Double Gloucester and green and red pears. So without further ado, our night of wine, cheese, fruit and analysis!
After learning last week that Gouda cheese is named after the town of Gouda where it was originally traded, we decided to continue down the same path and find out what other cheeses are named after the places where they originated.