White Chocolate White Port Style and Blue Cheese

Usually around Christmastime, Neil and I try out a sweet wine. Pretty much right on schedule, we were given this bottle by some friends of the family that happened to make their own wine. When we do these sweet wine pairings we typically choose a strong cheese so when I saw this at ALDI, https://www.aldi.us, it was an easy choice.

The White Chocolate White Wine was bottled as a 375mL bottle, typical of many dessert wines or ice wines. As I swirled the wine the chocolate was unmistakeable! I noticed aromas of toast and smoke that I then related to brownies. Wow, that’s cool! Neil was reminded of a tootsie roll pop and possibly cordial cherries as he identified the aromas. Linda was tasting the wine with us and she agreed with the chocolate but also found alcohol aromas. This wine was thick with fast moving legs and Neil thought it “tasted like port.” I noticed that the wine was tangy, with a lingering flavor. Neil enjoyed it’s brawny, sweet, defined taste. Linda found it to be a smooth, sipping wine. I was impressed at it tasting sweet and chocolatey but not sugary. Job well done on this sweet wine! I’m curious what the process for making the wine involved, maybe chocolate was added to it to achieve this uniform flavor? I’ll have to find out from them!

The ALDI brand blue cheese had a funky and salty aroma. Neil said it “smells like blue cheese!”. I guess that means both the wine and cheese are how they were meant to be, according to Neil. Linda was surprised when she smelled the cheese because it reminded her of vinegar. Neil noticed a funky, milky aftertaste and was impressed by the quality of this blue cheese. I found the texture to be soft and smooth without the crunchy bits that I usually notice in blue cheese. Linda described it as creamy like butter! After tasting the cheese, there was a hint of a tart finish and my mouth watered. Although Neil and Linda both really liked it, I’d say I missed that crunchy element.

When I paired the White Chocolate Wine with the Blue Cheese, the wine smelled the same but seemed a little lighter, maybe the chocolate was not as rich? The wine was more tangy and the cheese more bold due to the smokiness of the cheese increasing. Neil thought the wine and cheese were both too strong to be paired together. Linda didn’t like the pairing either; she said it was strange and preferred them individually. Although we all found the pairing a little weird, Neil and I both had a quick instance of the pairing working well but then it didn’t. Oh well, we found a nice sweet wine and an inexpensive tasty blue cheese, that works for me!