In order to celebrate WineAndCheeseFriday this week, we purchased tickets to the French Wine Tasting Event, hosted by Pierre Sparr, owner of Charles Sparr Winery. This event was held at the BevMo down the street from our apartment. (http://www.bevmo.com) They remodeled the entire store a few months ago and now have a tasting bar where they hold weekend happy hours as well as some more formal tasting events. This will be our first time using their tasting bar so let the tasting begin.
We received this wine as a gift around the holidays. Knowing the usual flavor profile of Viognier, flowers or peaches, I chose a cheese that would probably have some sweetness to it. This cheese, Rogue River Blue, is one that I’ve tried a handful of times and due to it’s seasonal nature, I figured we should seize the day for the pairing. (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/cheese-plus-intimate-and-exclusive-tasting-friday/)
After tasting the cheeses at the Cheese Plus event (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/cheese-plus-tasting-second-day-saturday/) we knew we had to try another one of the Luigi Guffanti cheeses with some wine. We became so familiar with this cheese brand last year when we visited their cheese cave (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/a-trip-to-a-cheese-cave-arona-piedmont-italy/). What better wine to try with the Robiola a 3 latti (3 milks) than a Pinot Noir, especially one that I used to sell at work and already knew the characteristics. Since this wine is from 2006, we opened it at 630 and waited to taste it for about 45 minutes.
After reading all about the party planning in part one (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/112647446928/east-coast-wine-party-working-in-the-wine-industry) stay tuned for the tasting notes for these East Coast wines.
Working in the wine industry in Florida and then in California, I received an interesting perspective as to what is defined as “Wine Country.” I heard that there is wine made in almost all of the United States. This is not to say that every state can grow grapes but many states purchase juice from one of the grape growing regions and make their own wine.