This weeks WineAndCheeseFriday is about the Mt. Etna wine tasting that I attended at William Cross Wine Merchants (http://wmcross.com). As the regular readers of this website know, this is a cute wine shop, pretty close to my home in San Francisco, where I have attended a few wine tastings. ( http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/90139827273/the-strange-this-week-i-attended-a-wine-tasting) ( http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/105670703153/holiday-wines-at-william-cross-wine-merchant) It has been a while since my last visit there so I wanted to catch another one of their Wednesday night tastings.
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.
We recently took a trip to visit Neil’s family in Erie, Pennsylvania and decided to make a trip out to their Wine Country, http://www.lakeeriewinecountry.org. What a strange feeling it is to be driving around “up North” and feel like you are in Wine Country. I remember a past trip to visit and asking why there were so many grapes and finding out that Welch’s is based nearby. As you may expect, this would mean that many of the grapes are the Concord varietal but there are quite a few different varietals that thrive in this climate near the lake. There are over 25 wineries available to visit in this region but we limited ourselves to just one, Heritage Wine Cellars, http://heritagewine.biz.
This was our final “Swiss” cheese. Benno said it was another cheese that he really liked in Switzerland but we didn’t have a chance to taste it until after they left. Since it wasn’t a cheese we had heard of before, we took a wild guess that this French Chardonnay might pair with it. This wine is from the French Wine Tasting that we attended at BevMo so we have tasted it before but maybe it’s changed since then. (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/114788359563/french-wine-tasting-at-bevmo-in-order-to) Let’s see how we did with the pairing.
It’s been over a year since we visited any Sonoma vineyards so we took a trip out when Benno and Nora were here. We had a chance to visit a few places that day but today’s entry will be about Wilson Winery. (http://wilsonwinery.com) We heard about Wilson Winery from the lady at the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce and saw that they had food available too so we planned to have lunch there that day. This was our first time visiting the Dry Creek Valley region of Sonoma so we were excited to taste another area’s terroir!
After reading the Sparkling Sauvignon Blanc and Emmentaler entry, http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/121356608301/bodkin-blanc-de-sauvignon-blanc-and-emmentaler, maybe you wondered if Benno, our dairy farmer friend, would share some other cheese knowledge? Well you are in luck because this is the second entry featuring our Swiss friends with more Swiss cheese! Neil and I were both excited when they brought us both a young and aged Gruyere cheese so we could taste the difference. What a great idea for WineAndCheeseFriday. They knew the cheese better than us, although we have had a couple Gruyeres* in our time, so we asked what type of wine would pair well with both cheeses. It seemed a Merlot, not being too heavy or too light with a smooth taste should do the trick.