Torrontés Tasting Flight, Quebradas, Costa Rica

wineandcheesefriday June 14, 2019 No Comments

We told you about how much fun we had creating our first home wine tasting so we decided to do another. The wines actually all came from the same distributor in San Jose, CR. It was so much fun to purchase an entire case of new wines to taste! Today’s set of wines are all 2017 Torrontés wines from Argentina. We’ve only tried one or two bottles of this grape before this tasting so we figured it would be interesting to try a few different brands side by side. Do you ever try varietal specific tastings? Let’s see how ours turns out! Read More…

Categories: Wine Tasting Tags: Tags: Argentina wine, corbe gourmet, Costa Rica, dinner wine, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, RJ Viñedos Winery, San Huberto Winery, torrontes, Valle de La Puerta Winery, white wine, wine tasting, wine tasting at home, wine tasting flight, wineandcheesefriday, wines under $15

Celebrating Rosé Day with a Provence Rosé and a Lavender Cheese

wineandcheesefriday June 7, 2019 No Comments

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 ? Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Holiday, Wine and Cheese Pairing Tags: Tags: Amsterdam Cheese and Liquor Store, Basiron cheese, dutch cheese, floral cheese, Gouda, Henri Willig cheese, lavender cheese, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, National Rose Day, Netherlands, Pink Society, Provence rosé, Rose, Rose Day, RoseAllDay, Sint Maarten, souvenir, St Maarten, Ste Venture rosé, wine pearls, wineandcheesefriday, yeswayrosé

Happy Chardonnay Day

wineandcheesefriday May 23, 2019 No Comments

In order to celebrate Chardonnay Day today, I’ve looked through past WineAndCheeseFriday entries to find those featuring Chardonnay. All of you Chardonnay Lovers out there will be excited to see that we’ve written many entries featuring this grape. We even went as far as creating “Chardon-May” last year and had a month long celebration of this popular white wine. Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Holiday Tags: Tags: 2012 Chappellet Chardonnay, Beringer Founder’s Estate Chardonnay, Biltmore Estate, champagne, Champagne Method, Chardon-May, chardonnay, chardonnay day, Charles Smith Wines, Finca Sophenia, Fuzion Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay, husch, kendall jackson, la crema, Mâcon-Villages Chardonnay, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Methode Champenoise, steele wines, white wine, wine holiday, wineandcheesefriday, Woodlands Chardonnay

Last night at Steve and Alexandra’s, Chicago, Illinois

wineandcheesefriday May 20, 2019 No Comments

We wrapped up our trip to Chicago by having a bit of an impromptu dinner party with about six people. We had been gathering up some goodies while we made our way around town going from wine shop to wine shop and of course, cheese shops too. Now it was time to try them all out. Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Pairing Tags: Tags: Chateau D'Oupia Minervois, cheese, Chicago, feta cheese, french wine, goat cheese with ash, Indiana cheese, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Mexican wine, Misión 16 by Santo Tomas, red wine, sheep milk, Wabash Cannonball, wine, wine tasting with friends, wineandcheesefriday

Tacama Wine Tasting, Ica Valley, Peru

wineandcheesefriday May 2, 2019 No Comments

Have you ever tried wine from Peru? Today we’ll be featuring three wines from Tacama Winery, the oldest winery in South America. It was founded in 1540 and still continues to produce wines almost 500 years later. The vineyards are located in the Ica Valley Oasis, which boasts hot days and cool nights and can be found in the southern part of Peru. This growing region, as well as any wine from Peru, is new to us. Did you know they started producing wine in Peru long before Chile or Argentina? These are the countries we usually think of for South American wines. Read More…

Categories: Wine Tasting Tags: Tags: gran blanco, gran tinto, ica valley, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Peru wines, red blend, red wine, San Jose distributor, selección especial, special selection, Tacama Winery, white blend, white wine, wine shipment, wine tasting, wineandcheesefriday

Copa Vino de Marañón y Mozzarella Cheese

wineandcheesefriday April 26, 2019 No Comments

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. Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Pairing Tags: Tags: cashew, cashew fruit, cashew wine, cheese, Copa wines, Costa Rica, costa rica cheese, Costa Rica wine, farmer's market, marañon, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Mozzarella, Turrialba, wine, wine and cheese in spanish, WineAndCheese with the neighbors, wineandcheesefriday

Grilled Cheese Day

wineandcheesefriday April 11, 2019 No Comments

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. Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Holiday Tags: Tags: crostini, Durham NC, FB Fan Page, gluten free available, Grilled Cheese Day, italian wine, La Calle di Cotocci, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Toast Paninoteca, Toscana, wine and cheese, wineandcheesefriday

Wine and Chocolate Pairing, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

wineandcheesefriday April 5, 2019 No Comments

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! Read More…

Categories: Other Wine and Cheese Experience Tags: Tags: Argentina wine, cacao, Caribeans chocolate, Chilean wine, Cho.Co, chocolate tasting, Chocorart, Costa Rica, Costa Rica wine, handmade chocolate, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Puerto Viejo, Talamanca chocolate, tannins, Teber Vino Blanco Achampañado, Trivento Tribu Malbec, Ventisquero Clásico Cabernet Savignon, wine and chocolate, wineandcheesefriday

Zinfandel/Tannat with a Goat Cheese Log and Aged Gouda

wineandcheesefriday March 29, 2019 No Comments

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. Read More…

Categories: Wine and Cheese Pairing Tags: Tags: Aged Gouda, Brecon Estate, goat cheese log, green olive, kalamata olive, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Paso Robles, prosciutto, red wine, salami, wineandcheesefriday, Zinfandel/Tannat

Making Cheese in a Tropical Setting, A Visit to Quesos Monte Azul in Chimirol de Rivas, Costa Rica

wineandcheesefriday March 16, 2019 No Comments

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. Read More…

Categories: Cheese Tasting Tags: Tags: artist retreat, ash goat cheese, cheese, cheese molds, cheese tasting, cheesemaking, Chimirol de Rivas, Costa Rica, costa rica cheese, cow's milk, goat's milk, goats milk cheese, Maria Ferraro Beardsley, Quesos Monte Azul, raw milk, Raw-Milk Cheese, tropical cheese, vegetarian rennet, wineandcheesefriday