☆ Dinner Blog #2

For my dinner pairing this week, it was so fun to cook with my mom and pick out some wines to pair our meals with! We cooked for my dad and brother as well and had a three course meal with three different wines! For our first course we had jalapeño and bacon wrapped shrimp with a Chardonnay. Second course we had barbecue chicken, rice and vegetables with a Cabernet Sauvignon and finally a fruit tart with a Riesling!  

The first course of shrimp and Chardonnay went together really well! I typically am not the biggest shrimp fan, but wrap anything in bacon and I think I'll eat it! This Chardonnay was great as myself and my parents love Coppola wines, it was very smooth and creamy which brought out the spice and richness of the bacon and jalapeño! My parents pair Chardonnay wine with seafood often and I really have started to like it more and more. I am usually a red wine girl and like sweeter white wines if I do choose to drink white, but throughout my time in this class I have really grown to like Chardonnay.

For our second course we barbecued chicken with two different Austin based companies sauces, mainly a mango sauce was used! Along with our chicken we had a side of brown rice, corn, mushrooms, and tomatoes! This meal was such a fun welcome home to Austin for my brother and I got to have my very favorite type of wine! I love Cabernet Sauvignon and before this class I didn't realize that almost all of the wine my family usually has with their most common main courses, is a Cab Sav! This Cabernet was  the perfect addition to dinner and its boldness brought out all the different flavors of the meal. The grill left the perfect amount of char on the chicken and I think that is why I think this was such a great pairing.

Lastly, a tart from my favorite dessert place in Austin! This La Madeline fruit tart had a creme middle with a biscuit bottom and was the most delicious end to our meal! The Riesling I paired with this meal, although my dad poked fun at me for it a little bit, complimented the dessert perfectly! The Riesling was very fruity and sweet just like the dessert and although I thought that may be too overpowering it went together very well! This was a cheaper Riesling so I think I would really like to try a more expensive one and see if I like it by itself because I am not sure if I could just drink this one on its own without a meal with it!

☆Winery Tour - The Austin Winery

The Austin Winery was such a fun and different experience and a perfect alternative from the winery which I had planned to go to originally. Originally, a friend and I were going to the Spicewood Vineyard in Spicewood, Texas, just slightly outside of Austin, but because of weather we had to find a quick alternative! This urban winery outside of downtown Austin was such a fun and different vibe than I was expecting.

The winery was filled with barrels and fermenting tanks of the Austin Vineyards specialty wines! My friend and I chose the $20 for 4 tasting glasses option so that we could get a good feel of the place and the wines. To order wines there was a walk up bar area with a very wine intelligent man who worked for the winery, who answered all our questions, gave us recommendations and showed us all of the different bottles they had!

The four tasting wines which I chose were the Violet Crown, Malbec, Cinsault, and the Hill Country Rosso. We tried two at a time and had an amazing charcuterie plate with multiple different cheeses and some meat and bread as well. I actually really loved having all of these new cheeses and unique meat to pair with the wines and thought it really added to the experience which my friend and I had.

Talking about experience, I thought this was such a fun vibe and a unique thing to do with friends. My best friend and I which I went to the winery with, has been my friend since we were about 5 years old so we have truly done so many different things in Austin for fun. Going to a winery was something we had not tried yet and it really reinforced in me how great of a social thing wine is. We sat in the winery for over 2 hours just chatting and enjoying the wine!

The Hill Country Russo was my absolute favorite! It was a floral and jammy red wine and it was made to go with charcuterie! This wine is a blend of red and white grapes including Tempranillo, Malbec, Cinsault, Trebbiano, and Malvasia Blanca!

This winery was founded in 2014 and is the very first full production grape to glass winery in Austin! The man who gave us all the information and poured our tasting glasses was Cooper Anderson, the head winemaker at the Austin Winery!

The winery was such a great environment with a nice atmosphere, there were young adults, families, older couples and even a man with a dog! There was a real openness about the people, place and the making of the wine!

☆Wine and Cheese Pairing - December 1

Home is where the good wine and cheese is! This week while I was home with my family for Thanksgiving break I had such a fun time with my parents (big wine lovers themselves) showing them all that I have learned this semester! It was also so great to be back in my favorite Texas Grocery store with an amazing wine selection with so many knowledgeable people and also a great selection of cheese.

Like I said in my last wine and cheese pairing blog, I am not super experienced with different cheeses and feel that I always gravitate to the more "basic" and popular cheeses! My mom and I went shopping and decided to try a pairing with Smoked Gouda, Brie, and Jarlsberg, three cheeses which I have never tried before! I am pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new things but when my dad explained to me I had to leave the cheese out before eating it so that the texture became more "squishy" I was a little concerned, but once again I surprised myself.

The first night my family and I tried the Brie and the Smoked Gouda with some crackers and one red wine and one white wine. I decided to pair the Brie with a Cabernet Sauvignon, which has become my favorite type of wine from this class! The Brie cheese really surprised me as I feel I have always had a preconceived notion about this type of soft ripened cheese. I think the Cabernet Sauvignon was a good pairing because it was more bold and bodied and went well with the soft cheese and salty crackers which I paired it with. I liked this cheese but I did feel it lacked a little bit of flavor especially in comparison to the next tasting which was the Smoked Gouda. I think perhaps in the future I could pair the Brie with a more fruity but also bold wine.

The next cheese was a Smoked Gouda which I paired with a Cotes Du Roussillon blend of Grenache Blanc and Grenache Gris grapes. I loved this cheese and it was so flavorful and bold that I thought this pairing was perfect. The white wine was refreshing and light while the cheese was more dense and smoky and I think it was a great mix!

Lastly was Chardonnay and Jarlsberg! If we're being honest, I had never heard of this wine before my mom suggested it. This cheese was definitely my least favorite but I really enjoyed this Chardonnay! It was very smooth and I do not think it was why I didn't like the cheese. In my opinion the cheese was a little too rubbery and almost sour in my opinion. I think the wine was possibly a little to fruity and pear flavored which in my opinion didn't mesh perfectly with the cheese but I think that the wine would be perfect on its own.

I am so excited, and have already started planning, a charcuterie board for Christmas time for my family and can't wait to pair the meats and cheeses with some wines from all the things I have heard this semester!

☆Tasting - Grifone - Primitivo

Another one of my great Trader Joe's finds - Grifone! This wine I bought last week when I was planning my meals for my dinner pairing night, but ended up not using this bottle! For the price tag of only $4 this old vine Zinfandel really surprised me!

I paired this wine with a. tomato bisque soup and some sour dough bread and although it may be an unlikely combo I think the two went well together. This wine had strong fruit and spice notes and I think the spice notes were what paired super well with the soup!  This wine was medium in boldness and had a lighter body for a red wine, but I did enjoy it. I think my enjoyment of this wine may have stemmed from the more bold and creamy soup which I had it with. The soup was definitely a heavier soup and was juxtaposed well with the wine so in the future I would like to have this wine with cheese or even on its own to see how it holds up !

☆ Fast Facts
Name:Grifone 
Variety: Zinfandel
Country: Italy
Year: 2018
Price: $4
Review:


Zinfandel in America…Primitivo in Italy…Mali Plavac in Croatia…For more than a millenium, the mystery grape of international viticulture travelled all over the world. Grifone is 100% Primitivo from old Zinfandel vines of Puglia region, a result of long study made in conjunction with local growers, trying to rediscover the original concentration of fruit, spices and flavours of this historical grape. Our Primitivo is soft and deep with flavorful vanilla notes and a long finish.

☆ Dinner Blog #1

I had so much fun with this weeks Dinner Blog Report and just like my cheese pairing I decided to just make a day of it! I made an Appetizer, Main Course, and Dessert and paired each with a different wine!

For the first course, the appetizer, I made bruschetta! I absolutely love bruschetta and fell in love with it in Italy when I was traveling with my family. I am so excited that I learned how to make it this week because I always love visiting my favorite restaurant back in Austin whenever I'm home, Mandola's, to get the best bruschetta in Austin.

For the second course, the Main, I made a creamy fehttuchini chicken dish, with sun dried tomatoes, spinach, and bacon and tomato to garnish it! This dish was also something new for me because usually I make very basic pasta dishes, but it was fun to experiment with new flavors, and I even got to cook with a dry wine to add into the pasta sauce!

For the dessert, my favorite dish of every meal, I made strawberry, chocolate, ganache brownies. each of these dishes was fun to make but I am a big chocolate girl and this one definitely took the cake ( no pun intended).

I bought all my wine and ingredients from both Trader Joe's and Walmart and really enjoyed planning out these recipes. Before I went to the store I got my shopping list all ready and thought about what pairings would be fun and different than what I would usually eat in my day to day life. I incorporated meals and flavors which are usually my favorite but I did want to step out of the box and cook something more complex than a usual college gal meal.

The appetizer was so yummy and tasted just like the bruschetta from my favorite restaurant in Austin. i thought that the Chianti wine was the perfect pairing for a meal with these flavors even thought it is not my typical favorite wine! My bruschetta had olive oil, garlic, itiallian bread, tomato, balsamic, and basil! The Chianti definitely helped bring out the olive oil and basil flavors while hiding the garlic as I had hoped. While I was cooking I thought that the garlic was going to over power my entire dish but I thought that the wine did a great job of bringing out all of the more hidden flavors. The Wine I choose for this appetizer pairing was. Chianti from Trader Joe's - Chianti Riserva Gaetano d' Aquino. I uncorked this wine for about 45 minutes to an hour as the bottle advised before serving the wine and the food. The Chianti felt quite spicy to me and was not my favorite wine while drinking it on its own but I do think it brought something new to this dish. Obviously, an Italian wine was a great choice to go with a very typical Italian appetizer, but this wine was very tart and just overall not something I would continuously pick up off the shelf.

My main course was my favorite because I absolutely loved all the flavors which came with the fehttuchini! I especially loved this meal because it gave me a greater appreciation for Chardonnay. I have never really been a chardonnay girl but the buttery sauce on the pasta was a great match with the buttery feel of the Chardonnay which I had ! The Chardonnay I purchased from Trader Joe's was a California bottle (2018) - Purple Moon Chardonnay. This wine was advised to be paired with roasted chicken, pasta, and fish, and I covered two of the three. The pasta I made was in a butter, dry wine , and heavy cream sauce, mixed with spinach leaves and sun dried tomato. To garnish my pasta I used bacon, spinach and sliced tomatoes and I would definitely make this meal and pair it the same way again. The wine was quite fruity forward but also gave a nice buttery after taste and strong mouthfeel for a white wine. The wine did not over power the dish at all and I was surprised that wish so many flavors being present in the dish, nothing was lost and the wine complimented each flavor, especially the sauce. The sauce as well as the sun dried tomatoes were my favorite part of this dish and I was very happy with my pairing choice!










Last but definitely not least, dessert! I made strawberry chocolate ganache brownies and they were amazing! I loved the juxtaposition between the dense brownie and ganache and the fruity sweet notes of the strawberry. This dessert was almost perfectly replicated in the wine which I paired dessert with. The Roulé Rouge blended red was a very basic table wine as it should be for around $6, but I did think its bold flavor of raspberry, cherry and blackberry. The nose of this wine is very prominent the second it is uncorked and I thought the strong aspect of this wine made my dessert even better than I thought it could. :)

I really did have so much fun doing this wine pairing activity and can't wait to do the next one with my family and friends. I also am excited to go out to meals with my family and be able to order the wine which correctly corresponds to the meal I order!

☆ DTN Blog 1

This DTN Activity, I chose to do Lesson 6 : Color Me Clueles : Is there Anything to a Wine's Color? The set I chose was the Zinfandels. I chose a Red Zinfandel and a White Zinfandel! I got my Red Zinfandel from Trader Joe's - Pure Bred Old Vine Zinfandel (2017) Lodi California.  My White Zinfandel, I got from Walmart - Oak Leaf Vineyards White Zinfandel (2018) Ripon, California!

 The Red Zinfandel is a lower intensity red than wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. The edges of this wine while in the glass are more light magenta rather than deep red. When you shine a light on a glass of this wine or take a picture with the flash, you can see the deep pink that a Red Zinfandel has although the name may be a little misleading.
The White Zinfandel is very

light pink and does not change much in the glass versus in the bottle. Whether a light is shone on it from above, below, or even on the edges the wine does not seem to change color at all. The White Zinfandel is very consistent in color at all angles. A very light pink, with peachy tones, once again misleading by the name as it is no where near white.




As I started with the lighter of the two, The White Zinfandel is very very sweet in taste. This wine is very refreshing and makes your mouth water and there is no dryness in sight! This Oak Leaf White Zinfandel is very fruity and the strongest note I taste is strawberry. The scent of this wine is very citrusy with strong notes of light red fruits overall.





The Red Zinfandel has a much stronger mouthfeel as I expected, it is very bold and upon first smell, I feel that it gives off much darker fruit notes. I smell blackcurrant and even blueberry. I personally like darker wines so this wine stuck out much more to me and I liked the bolder fruits in this wine. This wine had a very smoky finish and I definitely found some smokey notes as well.