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 created many entries over the past five years. After reading through them I’m excited to say that we have identified the more commonly found flavors and aromas of apple, citrus, butter, toast and some minerality in these wines. Once we started to get a little more into Chardonnay, we also identified banana, mango, vanilla, cantaloupe, caramel, creme brûlée, and apricot. It's definitely a wine that can range in flavors and aromas!
In order to celebrate Neil’s Birthday weekend, we headed out to Lake County. We have been here once before almost two years ago,(http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/60941545845/trip-to-lake-county-labor-day-weekend-part-1) (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/60941630541/trip-to-lake-county-labor-day-weekend-part-2), and were fortunate to be able to stay in the guest house at a vineyard.
We tried this wine when we attended the French Wine Tasting at BevMo (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/114788359563/french-wine-tasting-at-bevmo-in-order-to) and knew that we both wanted to try it again with cheese. Although we knew we liked it, we weren’t quite sure what type of cheese to pair with it. Then I was at Real Food Company, http://www.realfoodco.com, looking at their cheeses and was intrigued by this cheese. It sounded like something we’ve come across before and was shaped a little differently than most cheeses we’ve tasted. (http://www.vermontcreamery.com/bijou-1) In the sense of adventure, I grabbed the cheese with intent to pair it with our Pinot Blanc.
When we visited Sottomarino back in March, http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/115417517063/treasure-island-and-wine-tasting-at-sottomarino, we had the chance to try the wines at the Howell Mountain tasting room as well. Howell Mountain is a famed grape growing region in Napa Valley but this brand makes their wine on Treasure Island, as part of Winemaker’s Studio. (http://www.howellmountainvineyards.com/wine-shop.html)
During our trip to Massachusetts, I celebrated my birthday. The Wine And Cheese pairing for this week was a gift from my brother Vinny’s family. The wine was a familiar California brand but the cheese was something out of the ordinary, packaged in a container, filled with olive oil. Since both products were liquid, and we only had carry-on suitcases for the airplane, we continued the celebrating with Vinny and his bride, Koren. I will say, I was pretty impressed with my brother’s choice for the pairing, having a feeling that the Chardonnay would go well with a soft goat cheese.
When we purchased this Zinfandel back in the summer at Cline Cellars (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/95170593813/cline-cellars-red-blend-and-toscano-cheese-with) we were told to hold onto it for about 6 months before opening it. Having patiently put our time in, we decided to use it this week for WineAndCheeseFriday. Zinfandel is a wine Neil and I both enjoy but not knowing if it will have pepper spice flavors or jammy fruit flavors, it is always one that’s hard to pair with cheese. We have never tried a Basque cheese so we figured we’d see how it worked with our mystery wine.