As you may remember, Neil and I made chèvre about a year ago and dazzled our friends. (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/making-goat-cheese/) Since I am visiting my niece and nephew in western Massachusetts, I thought I would share the fun with them. The kit we purchased from Belle Chèvre (http://www.bellechevre.com/) had more than enough supplies remaining from last time so we just had to find some goat milk. This did prove to be a bit challenging but luckily there was a Trader Joe’s to pick up our last ingredient.
We purchased this wine a few months back while wine tasting in Sonoma. (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/hawley-wine-tasting-healdsburg-ca/) We couldn’t pass up such a delicious wine, especially one that is the final vintage from that vineyard. As we’ve mentioned before, we choose cheeses based on which wines we have waiting at home. We tasted this cheese during our tour of Cowgirl Creamery, https://wineandcheesefriday.com/cowgirl-creamery-tour-and-point-reyes/. Knowing this cheese had some funk, we thought a Pinot Noir would be a great match. It’s always exciting to have a local wine and cheese to pair!
When we paired the Summertime White Blend and Fiscalini Bandaged Cheddar, it was an out of the ordinary warm day in San Francisco. So warm actually, that we couldn’t even stand to sit in our apartment. We proudly present this WineAndCheeseFriday from our fire escape.
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.
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)
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.