Cheese Plus Intimate and Exclusive Tasting Friday

Cheese Plus Intimate and Exclusive Tasting Friday 1

When we attended the Cheese Plus tasting during The Fancy Food show weekend, last year, we had such a wonderful time! We learned about cheeses from all over the world and made some great connections. We knew the event was coming soon so we marked our calendars once we received this year’s invite from Cheese Plus, http://cheeseplus.com. Due to our schedules, Neil and I planned to attend on different days. I will be writing about Friday and he will cover Saturday’s vendors.

Top Wines of 2014

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.

Top Cheeses of 2014

Top Cheeses of 2014 1

In order to celebrate Christmas we came up with our top cheeses of 2014. See the list below:

Holiday Wines, at William Cross Wine Merchant

Holiday Wines, at William Cross Wine Merchant 1

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?

Mourvèdre and Stuffed Pumpkin

Mourvèdre and Stuffed Pumpkin 1

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!

Aurora and Goat Milk Brie

Aurora and Goat Milk Brie 2
Aurora and Goat Milk Brie 1

This week we chose a wine from our recent trip to Rosa Fiorelli Winery (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/102075609983/a-visit-back-to-rosa-fiorelli-winery-bradenton). And the cheese really has us wondering, a goat milk Brie, http://cheese.about.com/od/frenchcheeses/p/Goat-Brie.htm. Can’t wait to get into that one! I mentioned this pairing at work before I left one day and had others excited about it too, so without further ado, Aurora Muscadine wine and Goat milk Brie.