Last week when I was searching for information on Monasterio wine, I came across a forum regarding wine in Costa Rica. There I saw that box wine was pretty common in Costa Rica. We decided to give one a try this week. For the cheese, we chose one that we found at a rest stop.
This is our first week in Costa Rica! We figured it was appropriate to find some Wine And Cheese from here to discuss…when in Rome! On our first day here we headed over to the MegaSuper in order to see what was available. There were definitely some familiar American wines here but we wanted something authentic. Without any real idea of what we were buying, we chose the Monasterio Vino de Uva fortalecido and Quesos del Norte las cuatro a Ahumado.
Both our wine and cheese this week are from recent tasting events that we attended. The wine is from Holiday wines at Wm Cross Wine Merchant (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/holiday-wines-at-william-cross-wine-merchant/) and the cheese is from the Friday night Cheese Plus Intimate and Exclusive tasting (https://wineandcheesefriday.com/cheese-plus-intimate-and-exclusive-tasting-friday/). We enjoyed both of them individually at their tastings, let’s see how they do together?
In order to wrap up 2014, we both took a look through the blog entries to find our favorites. I chose my wines by those that I either tried to buy again or continued to talk about long after tasting it. Neil found wines that he either really enjoyed on its own or due to the transformation of the wine with the cheese. Click on the wines below to see the original pairing and the wine tasting notes.
For this week’s Wine and Cheese Friday, we will celebrate with Holiday Wines. This could encompass many types of wine but at William Cross Wine Merchant, http://wmcross.com/, they classified it as the questions most commonly asked during the Holidays. Mainly which wines are good crowd pleasers but also a good “party wine” and here in SF, one that would pair well with oysters or crab?
Every year Neil and I stuff a pumpkin instead of a turkey. We found this recipe a few years back when we set out to figure out something for Neil to eat on Thanksgiving with his turkey allergy. This meal has become one of our favorite hearty meals and we usually make it sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The first year we made it we found out the pumpkin size to stuffing amount ratio is harder to estimate than you’d think. This year our experience paid off and we had exactly what we needed to stuff 2 small pie pumpkins. Another thing we figured out was that it’s much easier to eat without the pomegranate seeds. We’ll probably omit these next year too, much easier to chew!