We heard about this wine during one of our previous trips to Costa Rica but couldn’t find it until this year. The wine is made from cashews and we really thought hard about how a wine could be made from nuts. We were telling someone about it and they said “Oh silly, the wine is made from the fruit, not the nut!” Did you know cashew was a fruit?? Just shortly after finding the wine in one of our local licorerias (liquor stores) we came across the fruit in the farmer’s market. We told the farmer that we’d be tasting the wine soon so he gave us one of the fruits to taste too.
posted last year on our Facebook Fan Page
Today is Grilled Cheese Day so I searched online for the best place in Durham, NC to get a grilled cheese. Once I confirmed that we could turn them into gluten free treats, we chose Toast Paninoteca.
Did you know there’s a region in Costa Rica that grows chocolate? We just found out about it on a recent trip to Puerto Viejo. We were pleasantly surprised to find a chocolate and wine pairing at Cho.co. The store was set up with all different chocolates and bars decorating the walls. I think there might have been ten different chocolate producers sold in the store. We visited on a Friday night and boy was it packed. People were excited to try their chocolate tastings, beer, coffee and wine pairings. Luckily, there was still some space at the bar so we found a spot there and began our tasting!
We purchased this bottle of wine during our visit to Brecon Estate back in the Fall, https://wineandcheesefriday.com/brecon-estate-paso-robles-ca/. We visited the winery during our Paso Robles Wine Tasting Extravaganza day. That was our first time trying a Tannat wine and we even got to pair it with cheese that day. We liked it so much we figured we should take home a bottle and learn a little more about this grape made popular in Uruguay. We chose to do the pairing with Neil’s sister Marilou, so we headed over to the local grocery store to see what types of cheeses we could find. We chose two of our go-to cheeses, a goat cheese log, and some aged gouda. This evening we were having Wine and Cheese for dinner so we will also be including our pairings with Prosciutto, Salami, kalamata olives, green olives, gluten free crackers and Melba toast.
When we have visited Costa Rica in the past, we noticed that most of the cheese here falls into the “fresh category” but never really put much thought into why that might be. We usually just chalked it up to which foods are popular here and that a wedge of hard, funky cheese didn’t really fit in. Once we discovered the Monte Azul brand of cheese as something more relatable to our palates and one that was possible to pair with wine, we found out the information we had been missing. Cheese is different in Costa Rica for good reason! It just so happened that Monte Azul was near where we were staying so we arranged for a visit there. Our entry will share the things we learned that day.
For this week’s Wine And Cheese Friday entry we’ll be featuring our first pairing during this trip to Costa Rica. We love visiting Costa Rica, but have found it challenging to find a wine and cheese selection that coincides with our palates. Wine can be found in local grocery and liquor stores here in Pérez Zeledón, but the selection is usually limited. Sweet wines are more popular here, whereas we prefer something drier and more complex, and most wines we find are from Chile and Argentina. Since we’ve visited three times previously, we’ve found our staple brands to enjoy on a regular basis, but are always hoping for something new and interesting. Imagine our surprise when we came across a Sicilian brand that had been previously featured on #WiningHourChat! We made a mental note and went back a week later to pick up the bottle of Stemmari Nero D’Avola.