Shortly after arriving in Billings, Montana, we found out there was a local winery, Yellowstone Cellars & Winery. Then as luck would have it, we mentioned to our AirBnB host about #wineandcheesefriday and he presented us with a bottle from there. Right around that same time, we found a Farmer’s Market, which is one of our favorite places to find cheese. Grindy's Cheeseballs, had a booth there and they offered about a half dozen spreadable cheese options, so we picked up two different ones. Now if only we could get over those head colds so we could enjoy them!
I always look forward to my #winechats on twitter and Laura is a fellow “winelover” that I’ve been chatting with through the years. She lives in Cleveland and its always nice to catch up when we have those monthly wine gatherings.
During our time in Costa Rica (much longer than we expected) we’ve been finding some really nice wines and cheeses. This trip we’ve had more purchasing options since we’ve been traveling around the country more. This has allowed us to find brands and shops that we never visited before. We’re also aware that it isn’t crucial to refrigerate cheese immediately so we’ve been fine taking the chance of driving home with it for a couple hours without thinking twice.
Have you ever tried wine from Peru? Today we’ll be featuring three wines from Tacama Winery, the oldest winery in South America. It was founded in 1540 and still continues to produce wines almost 500 years later. The vineyards are located in the Ica Valley Oasis, which boasts hot days and cool nights and can be found in the southern part of Peru. This growing region, as well as any wine from Peru, is new to us. Did you know they started producing wine in Peru long before Chile or Argentina? These are the countries we usually think of for South American wines.
This Christmas season, we planned to make some mulled wine for Christmas Eve. Many of my readers know how much I like Trader Joe’s and they just happened to carry a juice called Winter Wassail. This seemed like a familiar word I’d heard in a Christmas carol but what does it mean? According to Wikipedia, the house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts. Well that sounds fun! And it was so easy, we just had to add some red wine and warm it up!
We purchased this wine a couple weeks back at Cline Cellars, http://clinecellars.com. Cline was an impromptu stop after visiting Morton’s Warm Springs, for a day away from our “SF summer” (www.mortonswarmsprings.com) Our friends, Sabrina and Geoff, have visited Cline Cellars a few times and they were excited to share it with us. It didn’t hurt that Cline offers complimentary tastings.
Maria and Neil started wineandcheesefriday.com to learn more about wine in 2014. We’ve visited wineries, and creameries across the world to learn as much as we can about these two wonderful delacacies. We❤️🍷&🧀
