☆ 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!