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.
We picked up this wine at Wine 101 Hamden and the co-owner Chris told us, you guys have to try this one, “It's pretty strange!" Always on the hunt for the next wine to challenge us, we gladly accepted! Not really having a cheese in mind to pair it with, we brought it along for another wine picnic and paired it with sushi. Well, pairing it isn’t quite exact, we brought it along as our tasty beverage that we would deeply analyze, and then eat sushi. ?
During our time in Massachusetts the weather was very unpredictable. I lived there my whole childhood so you’d think I would be expecting that. So many days we watched the weather wondering if it would be sunny or rainy and what we could do to enjoy the day. This Sunday in particular, the forecast kept showing sunshine and low 80’s. We all knew it would be a great day to have a picnic in the park. We had our wine and picnic lunch all packed and ready! We’d bring a Pinot Noir rosé that we purchased at Wine 101 Hamden, and it even had a screw top. Our cheese this week was Edam, because surprisingly we’d never tried it before. Just needed to pack up the car and keep our fingers crossed that the weather predictions were correct!
We spent a few days in Cape Cod visiting my mom’s cousin, Karen, and her daughter, Lyndsay. It’s fair to assume that we brought along some wine to enjoy with them. We picked out this bottle of Steele Chardonnay when we were at Wine 101 Hamden a couple weeks back.
After shopping for so many delicious wines and cheese in the Lake Erie Wine Country, we knew we’d have a fun night ahead of us. We picked a night where Diane and Brian could come over to Aunt Kathy and Uncle Gale's house (her parents) and even Michelle (her daughter) was available. That meant there would be seven of us tasting wine and cheese. We had quite a menu chosen including four wines and four cheeses. Are you ready?? Hopefully we can all keep track of all these notes!
The plan was set long before we arrived in Erie, PA to go wine tasting with Neil’s cousin Diane and her husband Brian. They love wine tasting (and drinking) all those local grapes and could hardly wait to take us out in their neck of the woods. When we started looking into which wineries to visit I was pretty surprised how many of the local wines we had already tried (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/wine-and-cheese-tasting-at-aunt-kathys-house/). The main driving force for this tasting trip was to go find the new local cheese shop, Reverie Creamery and Market. Once I found where they were located along the Lake Erie Wine Trail we made our winery choices. Although we had four hours, we only made it to Reverie, 21 Brix and Noble Winery. That’s how it usually goes for us ?!