Good Morning!

A friend of mine was having a housewarming party and he ask me to help him pick out some “different” wines and cheeses. My first question is what do you mean by different? He said, I am tired of Cabernet and Merlot and jack cheese and Swiss. I have a new place and it is time to try new more exciting things. Then I said, I like the way your thinking!

We went to the wine shop first and started looking around for new wines. He said, I want to drink wine I have never heard of and probably can not even pronounce. Since I have trouble pronouncing most of them as well, we were ready for some fun. He said there will be 20 folks at my place and I want to have red, white, pink and bubbles available. He also said cheese and wine would be the focus, since he would not want to hang out in the kitchen all night making heavy appetizers.

He wanted 4 wines and four cheeses. The cheeses needed to be one hard, one soft-ripened, one semi-soft and one blue cheese. We had our work cut out for us. But we were both excited to see how it turns out.

We got a cart and started through the shop and I said best way to try new wines is look for the countries you are less familar with and he said let’s start with France. He said I know nothing about French wines and The first thing we found interesting to him was a Mourvedre, which is a red wine, but it can also be a rose’. As we were walking through the store I had my iPhone out and was reading to him about the wine. It is basically a wine that without blending it, can be, well, too powerful just for drinking and you will need food to tame it down for enjoying it. We ended up buying a Mourvedre Rose’ and the cheese was a Camembert from France. The wine came from an area called Bandol and it was not cheap. $60.00 per bottle and the cheese was $22.00 (remember we are feeding 20 folks).

Next we started looking for a new white wine from Argentina called Torrontes. (Many of you know my love for this wine is MASSIVE). This light, crisp white would pair very well with a cheese called Port Salut. The Torrontes sells for about $12 a bottle and we had $18.00 in cheese. I knew that if someone is not a huge wine drinker this easy sipping wine would suit them well.

Then we started looking for bubbles! We found ourselves in from of the Prosecco and Italian affordable bubbles are awesome. He was taken aback at the price point being $14.00 a bottle and we paired this wine with a hard aged cheddar. The bubbles and slight sweet finish will work perfectly with this cheese as a yin-yang balance thing! The cheese cost about $17.00.

Now we were looking for a new red wine and a blue cheese combination that would be daring and new. We found a Tempranillo from Spain. This is the most important grape of Rioja Spain and this wine to me is like a the love child of a Syrah and Pinot Noir. Lovely, medium bodied, with a full blast of fruit. I have some great ones and some lame one…studs and duds and well, we all take chances and we both thought this would be an interesting wine for our red wine lovers. We paired the wine with a Germany blue cheese called Cambozola. I have to be honest the cheese expert helped us with this pairing. We spent $20 a bottle on the wine and another $36 on the cheese.

As we were starting to head out of the store the cheese expert suggested we pick up some meats. We let the guru of thin sliced cured meats pick a selection for us. I am not going to go into the meats, it is not my forte and I will just “butcher” all the names.

We headed back to the house and of course we purchased an extra bottle of each wine and we opened the cheeses to try the pairings and wines. After we tasted the wines we started tasting with the cheeses we had paired at the store. We did VERY well. Thanks to my iPhone and some quick research in the stores we where impressed. Then we got creative and started trying some wines with cheeses that we had not a clue how they would react. That was awesome! I learn everyday about my palate, my reactions to pairings, what works for me, what does not and my pal and I laughed the afternoon away and that night he had a smashing successful housewarming. We put out cards with the names of the wines and cheese pairings if anyone wanted to take it home and they did take them and a few folks ask me to help them with their next gathering, so I was happy, he was happy and the guests loved the night.

In case you wondered the Prosecco and Aged Cheddar was the biggest hit of the night.

I thought I would share my wine and cheese adventure with you!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi