For this week’s pairing I decided to try another one of the recommended wine and cheese pairings at Trader Joe’s (http://www.traderjoes.com) The wine is a Chardonnay from Mendocino. I haven’t had many wines from this region so I was curious to see what it was like. The cheese, Le Delice de Bourgogne, is one I have tried before and all I could remember was that I liked it.
My friend Karen and I were excited to attend the first Wine Class at Enoteca Vino Nostro (www.enotecavinonostro.com) during the week. They spared no expense with the spread they offered; italian meats, cheeses, olive oil, of course, and a spicy sausage, bean and fennel dish. I have described the wines on their own as well as paired some of them with the delicious foods, to see how the wine might change. Since the cheeses weren’t labeled I’ve done my best to describe them in the pairings.
This week we are revisiting a wine from our past. Florida Muscadine, white dessert wine is produced by Rosa Fiorelli Winery, where I used to work. (http://www.fiorelliwinery.com/) This wine was one of our best sellers because the muscadine grape works so well for a dessert wine! It’s been a while since we’ve had it so I was curious how sweet it would actually be?
We purchased this wine in August during our trip to Castello di Amorosa in Napa, CA. (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/59728142614/first-trip-to-napa-8-27-neil-and-i-took-our) We tried this wine back then but other than a pretty cool ambiance in the Castle, we really didn’t remember the specifics of the wine. The description on the bottle says that it is a Zinfandel created in the Primitivo style. And if you’re wondering, Zingaro means gypsy.
It seems that while we were in Italy we mostly drank Chianti. The wines were fine but we were mainly just finding the “house wine” so nothing really stuck out for us. Looking forward to another trip to Italy to seek out some awesome wines.
We met Davide, our gracious cheese host, at the Cheese Plus Event we attended back in January,. He told us to come see the cave if we were ever in the area. We decided to make this happen since we would be traveling through Northern Italy during our recent trip to Europe.