Co-hosting #WiningHourChat with Chris from Wine101 Hamden
We had such a good time the first time I was the guest on WiningHourChat, that Li, Maggie and Cara asked if I’d like to do it again. We had the idea to do it sometime in the Fall and I already new I’d be in New England then. This got me thinking that Chris from Wine 101 Hamden is also in New England and that we could cohost the chat. And so it began!
Although we had the idea to cohost and even picked a tentative date, we had some brainstorming to do to figure out what the theme of the evening would be. Chris and I had done an episode of the Wine 101 Show, in the past and had so much fun geeking out about wine and cheese that it only seemed natural to do this again.
The idea for pairing the sparkling wines with the cheeses came from Chris always reminding people that they go so well together because the sparkling wines cut the fat of the cheese. We planned to choose a handful of sparkling wines that would be from all over the world and include a few different colors of wine. All these bottles could be found in the shop. The cheeses were more of a wild card but since we’d be choosing a few of those too, we decided to throw in some facts about assembling a cheese board. He also stocks cheese, so all Neil and I had to do was get to Connecticut and everything would be there.
Neil and I caught the train from Massachusetts to Connecticut and made an overnight of it. We arrived in the afternoon, had dinner and made our way over to Wine101 Hamden. We had a few hours to do our tasting and prepare the answers from #WiningHourChat. Neil started taking some photos for us so we could stay on top of documenting the night while we were enjoying all that wine and cheese. He’s also a big help to have when it comes time for fielding questions within the chat and I’m intensely scouring the feed for what I need to answer.
Chris had also wanted to broadcast the event on Facebook live. That made for an interesting dynamic to not only be typing and reading the Twitter feed but randomly stating our two cents about each wine and cheese we were currently tasting. Unfortunately, we weren’t thinking about copyrights, as we rocked out to the tunes we had playing in the background. This background music put an end to our Facebook portion of the evening but we continued following along with #WiningHourChat.
Ready to see the play by play of our questions and answers? They are all highlighted below. Hope this helps you learn a little bit more about the prosecco, cava, california sparkling and lambrusco that we chose. There’s also quite a few tips on assembling the cheeseboard, which aren’t really common knowledge. If you want to know more of the specifics on tasting notes about the wines or cheeses, see our link.
It’s always so much fun joining the group from #WiningHourChat, we have such a great bunch and all of us enjoy asking questions so it makes for a fast hour! And before you know it that hour’s up, which is how it played out that night. Chris and I were happy to have stayed on task with all our questions and Neil keep us in line. Of course, that wasn’t the end for us, we had more wine and cheese to partake in. Yup, I think between the 3 of us we pretty much drank all 4 bottles and all the cheese! But that’s all part of the fun right? Neil and I made our way back to the AirBnB for some shut eye and I’d worry about answering all those notifications the next day.
I think it took a few days to actually get through the entire chat and notifications but that’s all part of the adventure! We stopped by Wine 101 Hamden the next day to say Goodbye and Thanks to Chris. It’s always so much fun getting together with him, not to mention, the terrific selection of wine he carries there. Of course, we had to take home a bottle of that Lambrusco to try again. I wonder what other theme I could discuss on #WiningHourChat? Any ideas ladies??
