Here’s another Costa Rican Wine and Cheese pairing for you to enjoy. This week's wine hails from Spain but the cheese is from here. We found the cheese in our grocery store refrigerated case and it was simply called Tico Cheese. (The phrase Tico, typically refers to a person from Costa Rica, but hey, let’s give it a try). We’ve found a few Spanish wines during our trips here and Opera Prima is another new brand for us so we picked up a bottle. Without further ado, the pairing of Opera Prima Cabernet Sauvignon and Tico cheese.
Welcome to the first Wine and Cheese Friday coming to you from the Southern Zone of Costa Rica. Neil and I have visited CR a few times in the past and usually end up drinking wines from Chile and Argentina while we are here. There’s not much for Costa Rican produced wines, at least not made from grapes. We chose a Chilean brand that we’ve never heard of to start off our Costa Rican series, Undurraga.
Neil and I have now spent over three months in Central and South America. During our time there, we wanted to continue drinking wines but we didn’t know which wines to try. In order to showcase the variety of what was available while we were in Costa Rica and Ecuador, we created a new Pinterest Board, https://goo.gl/kCRHmt
The wine this week is a complete wild card. We were driving down the road, near Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and saw a roadside stand with a sign for wine. Well we had to stop here but really didn’t know what we’d find. There was a little kid that ran over to the car and said we could get 1000 for 3000. We eventually figured out that the 3000 was the price, converts to about $6 US. We gladly paid and were handed a previously used soda bottle with a white cloudy liquid. When I asked which fruit is used for this wine, the boy pointed over at a palm tree in the distance.
Throughout our time in Costa Rica we have been exploring many grocery stores to see the selection of wines available here. The wine we chose for this week’s selection seems to be a brand that is common here. The cheese is one we found at a farmer’s market. We were about to purchase some broccoli when we saw a sign for some cheese on a refrigerator, let’s give it a try.
Last week when I was searching for information on Monasterio wine, I came across a forum regarding wine in Costa Rica. There I saw that box wine was pretty common in Costa Rica. We decided to give one a try this week. For the cheese, we chose one that we found at a rest stop.