We’ve made you wait long enough to find out more about the tasty wines and cheeses that we purchased during our trip to Erie, PA. (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/125553865268/wine-and-cheese-tastingin-pennsylvania-we) It was such a fun night with 6 of us tasting wines, cheeses, and chocolate. When we came up with this idea with Neil’s family, everyone was excited to do some pairing so we ended up with 3 wines, 3 cheeses and chocolate. We didn’t quite have a formal pairing of everything by everyone but instead we let Neil’s Aunt Kathy, Uncle Gale, Cousin Diane and her husband Brian know how to proceed with the tastings. We like to take our time with tasting and then shout out any descriptions or adjectives to describe the wines and cheeses. This made it a little tricky for me to compile all the notes as well as do my own sampling but here’s what we discovered.
Since we are celebrating International Cabernet Sauvignon Day today, I figured we should get acquainted with this popular grape!
Neil and I not only like to drink wine, but also we love to be around the grapes before they turn into wine. Whenever we get the chance, we visit vineyards. Since harvest happens late summer to early fall, we called our friend who owns a vineyard to see when harvest might begin. Well we were in luck, because it was about to start in a few days.
When I started at Winery SF, http://www.winery-sf.com, over two years ago, I was introduced to the Revolution Series of wines. This was a collection of wines with incredibly colorful labels and themes reminiscent of the flower child era in San Francisco. There were all kinds of wines, Peace Love and Happiness, Flower Child, Values, etc. Included in the collection was “Speak”, a Syrah blend with an incredibly smoky flavor, dubbed “the campfire wine.” The grapes in 2008 were heavily influenced by the forest fires in Mendocino, CA, a characteristic described as “smoke taint.” (http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Northern-California-Vineyards-Impacted-by-Wildfires_4228)
This weeks WineAndCheeseFriday is about the Mt. Etna wine tasting that I attended at William Cross Wine Merchants (http://wmcross.com). As the regular readers of this website know, this is a cute wine shop, pretty close to my home in San Francisco, where I have attended a few wine tastings. ( http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/90139827273/the-strange-this-week-i-attended-a-wine-tasting) ( http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/105670703153/holiday-wines-at-william-cross-wine-merchant) It has been a while since my last visit there so I wanted to catch another one of their Wednesday night tastings.
As a Thank You Gift, our Swiss friends Benno and Nora brought us some wine from their recent trip to Canada. Have you heard of the wine region called Okanagan Valley? It’s another up and coming region to keep your eye on. As you might expect, its located near a big lake. Today’s wine is from British Columbia’s oldest family run winery, Gray Monk (www.graymonk.com), and features their Pinot Gris grapes, the signature white grape of the region. How exciting to get to try grapes from another nearby winemaking region.