Wine Dinner Blog #1

For this wine dinner blog I put together a meal with my roommates Peter, pictured on the left and Sam pictured on the right, I am in the center of the photo. We had a fabulous time drinking and eating together and I think we ended up with some real good food and wine pairings. 

For our first course I put together a little charcuterie board to pair with a Chenin Blanc. On the board we had two types of goat cheese, a city goat cheese and a blueberry thyme goat cheese. Then to drink we had Vouvray's La Forcine which was a Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley. The wine alone had real nice light fruity notes and a crisp finish which is why I chose to pair it with the rich creamy goat cheese. I found that the city goat cheese had a saltier taste which seemed to pair better with the sweetness of the wine. The blueberry thyme goat cheese on the other hand was sweeter and I found ended up being a little too sweet alongside the wine. However, overall I think this pairing was fabulous and the balance between the sweet wine and the creamy, savory cheese had me going back for more after every bite.

For our main course we had a nice New York strip which I reverse seared alongside a baked potato. To pair with the steak we had a Cabernet Sauvignon from Reino de Altuzarra, on its own this wine had some fabulous notes of dark cherry and a little bit of leather. Then paired with the steak I found the fatty cut of steak melded well with the high amount of tannins in the wine and really enhanced the flavors in the wine. I found that alone the wine was a little strong and tannic but the steak definitely helped to mellow it out and lead to a nice smooth wine with even greater dark fruit and leather flavors. Overall this pairing was also delightful and I found these two complemented each other very well.

For our last course I made some lemon squares to pair with a Prosecco from D.O.C. I found that the bright lemony flavor of the lemon squares paired super well with the lively and bubbly nature of the prosecco. This pairing was probably my favorite, the acidity of the Prosecco cut through the sweetness of the lemon bars and created this incredibly refreshing pairing. I will definitely be pairing these two together again in the future.

Overall I had a really great time just hanging out with my friends, cooking, eating, and especially drinking. All 3 courses and all 3 wines were big hits and I'm excited to do this again soon!

My Personal Experience With Wine

In this post I will dive into my personal experiences I have had with wine as well as my tastes and a little bit more about myself. To start off, let me introduce myself, my name is Will Robson and I am a senior at Virginia Tech studying Mechanical Engineering. I don't have too many wine drinking experiences or much wine knowledge but I hope that throughout the course of this semester I will expand my knowledge and grow my experiences with wine. I may not have much experience with wine but I do have lots of experience with other alcoholic beverages. I am an avid enjoyer of craft beers, bourbon and all manor of weird, funky cocktails. I hope that my experience with these beverages will have helped prepared my pallet at least a little to begin my journey with wine. I also love to cook and want to be able to implement wine into more of the meals I create. 

Like I said, I do not have too much experience with wine but that is not to say I've never enjoyed a good glass of Cabernet Sauvignon with a nice steak. In the past I've had wine alongside nice dinners with my family or over at friends houses during more formal gatherings but I've never known much about what I was drinking. One experience that stands out in my mind is one time I was over at a good friends house for Shabbat Dinner and we had a fabulous meal alongside some fabulous wine to pair with it. I don't remember specifically what we were drinking but I do remember having a nice red wine with dinner and then the most delicious, sweet dessert wine afterwards. I wish I remember what we were drinking because it was a fabulous way to cap off a delicious meal. 

So all this is to say that I have had some experiences with wine but I have never really known anything about the wine I was drinking. My goal with this course and with this blog is to learn everything I can about wine and to document the process using this blog. I hope that I can learn more about how wine is made and different types of wine but most importantly I want to learn how to pair wine and food well. My experience having Shabbat Dinner with my friend and his family was damn near magical and I would love to have the wine knowledge to put together pairings like that myself. So I guess in conclusion that is my one major goal, to be able to know enough about wine to put together the best food and wine pairings I can.