Snozilla Wine Dinner!

So, I took full advantage of being cooped up in my apartment through the Snowpocalyse or "Snowzilla 2016" this past weekend by having my first wine dinner!

I got this fabulous Soups, Stews & Chilis book done by Cook's Illustrated, a favorite cooking magazine of mine and my mother's, for Christmas, so I decided to go all in and make boeuf bourguignon, a traditional French beef stew. I got particularly excited because the recipe called for an ENTIRE bottle of red wine and more than three hours in the oven, so I knew it would have to be delicious!

The cheap pinot I bought to put in the stew. It fell out of the bag in the parking lot and miraculously didn't break!

Cooking prep!

Cooking the boeuf.

An hour and a half in.

My new favorite cookbook!

I invited my friend Marin, who is also taking Geography of Wine, over to join me!

We started our appetizer with honeycrisp apples, Brie, parmesan, and pepperoni, pared with a Nobilo 2014 Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. I picked this wine up for $11.99 at Food Lion, and I chose it because I liked the label and thought maybe a sweet wine would be a good aperitif.

The wine!

Marin and I tried to follow what we learned from the first week of videos, so we first swirled our wines artfully in the glass and sniffed and tasted them alone before sampling with food. We thought we picked up on fruitiness with a bitter or tart edge in the nose, and detected citrus notes and a fresh after-taste on the palate.

Me - post swirl

Marin sampling the cabernet sauvignon!

We LOVED the wine with the cheese. We found that the parmesan cut some of the sweetness and took away the bite/sting of the alcohol (like we learned in the book, yay!). And the Brie was just delicious with it. Brie is also very delicious alone, as I know very well, but it was superb with the sauvignon blanc.

Our appetizer presentation

However, it was awful, and I mean AWFUL, with the pepperoni. It might have been partly because the pepperoni I bought was a dried, spicy variety found at Gucci Kroger, but in any case it was horrible. We found that spicy and sweet do not go together well. Or at least these two didn't.

Next was the main dish. 

I chose a 2014 Pinot Noir by Hedgeline Vineyards to go with the beef stew. We had a harder time picking out notes with this one. We swirled our glasses and sniffed, and all we smelled was... alcohol. Rather disappointing after the fruity sauvignon blanc! On initial taste, we definitely noted a lightness to the wine. I think I've always thought of red wines as heavy wines, but this one was nice and light with an hint of oak. This went perfectly with the boeuf bourguignon! That might be partly because it already has 750 ml of pinot noir already in it, but the beef really brought out the fruity notes of the wine.

The pinot!

Boeuf bourguignon and pinot noir!

While the pinot was delicious with the stew, I wrote in my notes that it was: a) "dry" and that b) "I don't think I could drink a pinot on its own". I'll be interested to sample another brand or year of pinot noir in the future to see if that statement still holds true. Maybe this wasn't a good brand. Or maybe I just don't like Pinot Noir. We'll have to see!

A glass and a half in - enjoying the meal!

Marin and the meal!

We finished up our meal with dessert.

I served fudgy, chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream paired with a 2013 Ravenswood Red Zinfandel from California bought at Food Lion for $11.99. I had heard that chocolate pairs wonderfully with chocolate, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The Red Zin!

Once again, we though the wine smelled... boozy. Before tasting it with the chocolate, we detected a slight fruitiness (I thought it was maybe some notes of pear, though the label says"spicy ripe raspberry, cherry and boysenberry") and the same lightness as the pinot. So I guess my assumption that red wines are "heavy" can go out the window!

Brownies and wine!

I was disappointed with this pairing. I didn't think it meshed well at all with the chocolate. The bitter edge or dryness of the wine didn't go well with the sweetness of the chocolate for me, though I thought that it tasted better on its own after a couple of sips. The brownies were good, though!

So to sum it all up:

Our wine dinner was a success! It was definitely a good way to spend a snowy weekend locked in my apartment! I would definitely pick the sauvignon blanc again, and I liked the red zinfandel by itself, without food. I'd also like to try a pinot noir again on its own to see if I can actually drink it!

Hopefully I'll be able to do a wine tasting or another wine dinner soon!

Introduction

I know diddly squat about wine.

Well, that's an exaggeration actually. I know a few things about wine.

I spent my junior year studying abroad in France, the land of wine and cheese, which is a rather embarassing place to know nothing about wine. 

I know, or rather figured out quickly, that in France they categorize wine by the region in which it is made rather than by the type of grape, like we do here. I remember feeling like the comfortable rug of blind decision was yanked out from under me the first time I tried to order wine in France; unable to just say "I'll have the house red," or "I'll have a glass of merlot," like I had heard my mother say at restaurants before, I was stumped by the côte du Rhône's, Chateau d'Yquem's, and the Saint-Émilion's I saw on the menus instead of our standard merlot, pinot noir, pinot gris, etc. 

What's worse, is that my boyfriend is French. It seems like it is ingrained in his esprit what wines are good and bad, and which wines you drink with this, that, and the other thing. It was he who informed me (countless times) that the wine we were consuming was an apéritif and not just a table wine.

 Fortunately, spending my twenty-first year in France allowed me to dabble in wine, so I slowly determined what I liked and what I didn't like. Initially I thought I didn't like red wine, thinking it was all dry, so I stuck mostly to whites and the occasional rosé. But as I went along I accidentally stumbled into the reds, and now I seem to like everything!

Despite my forays into French wine, I'm still that person who goes into Giant or Kroger and picks the bottle with the prettiest bottle or label. Or I buy whatever is on sale and hope for the best. I still don't know precisely what I like and don't like (since I haven't really ever tasted anything I didn't like).

My personal goal and reason behind taking this class is to learn what I like and why I like it. I want to be more informed when I make my purchasing decisions. I want to be able to actually order a glass a wine at a restaurant without blindly pointing to a spot on the menu!

So hopefully, with the help of this blog, my highly entertaining and informative textbooks, and my plucky wine curiosity, I'll be able to achieve these goals!

Bring on the wine!