We had some friends in town from Switzerland so when I saw the Swiss flag on this cheese, it seemed like a good choice. We didn’t expect to learn so much by eating a “swiss cheese” with Swiss people. The wine is a sparking wine that we picked up on our recent trip to Lake County (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/119076681308/lake-county-wine-tasting-in-order-to-celebrate) and the tasting notes for the cheese appeared to be a good pairing for the wine flavors.
We had some friends in town from Switzerland so we headed up to Sonoma over the weekend. We made reservations for a wine tasting lunch at Sapphire Hill (www.sapphirehill.com) and couldn’t wait to experience it! Sapphire Hill is located in a wine tasting plaza in Healdsburg, CA with around 5 other tasting rooms, so there is plenty of wine to be enjoyed there! This was our second time visiting this part of Healdsburg (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/55233637275/healdsburg-fun-sunday-7-7-its-your-lucky-day) but there is always so much to see and do there.
Neil and I heard about and event called “Cheese Makes Me Happy Hour”, how could we resist? It is an event regularly held at the Cheese School of San Francisco on Wednesday evenings through the end of September. (http://thecheeseschool.com/products/cheese-makes-me-happy-hour) Not only do you get to enjoy a bunch of tasty cheeses but they give you a token for a glass of wine or beer and put out quite a spread of tasty offerings.
book written by George M. Taber, Time Magazine writer
I am a wine enthusiast who loves to learn, that’s what drew me to this field. When I first started out a few years back, I watched about five “wine movies” to get started with some wine knowledge. It still surprises me how much you can pick up when you really want to learn. One of those movies that I always go back to is Bottle Shock. When I saw the book Judgment of Paris — California vs France and the historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine at the library, I figured it was worth a read since I already had a loose idea of the story. I never realized I would end up enjoying the book so much that I constantly had to keep taking notes!
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.