Dinner - Homemade Italian

So, this weekend, my delightful friend Marin and I, decided to get ourselves back into gear and try another wine dinner! We had a great time doing the French themed dinner at the beginning of the semester, so this time we decided to switch it up with an Italian theme.

I decided to do a baked ziti with tiramisu for dessert, and Marin brought over bacon-wrapped aspargus for the appetizer.

Dessert prep!

It took four whole things of marscarpone cheese!

All the ladyfingers! *drools*

Making the sauce

Pre-baking!

 We paired our bacon-wrapped asparagus appetizer with a bottle of 2014 Apothic Crush that I picked up at Kroger for $10.99. I've been a huge fan of the Apothic red blend ever since my cousin introduced them to me a few years ago, and I had never tried their "Crush" blend. According to the label, it is "a decadent red blend that combines red fruit flavors with notes of caramel and a velvety smooth mouthfeel." Intrigued and frankly starving after having spent hours prepping our meal, Marin and I dove in!

So I realized after dinner (an several glasses of wine) that I had forgotten to take picture of the Apothic bottle. So this was my *artful* (read: inebriated) idea of a photograph of it. Note that half of the picture is of the table... *When Courtney imbibes and thinks she's a photographer*

 Before we dove into the meal we took care to swirl, sniff, and observe before shoving our faces. We picked up on red berries and a hint of spiciness and "bite" in the nose. Tasting it without food, we were surprised at how smooth it was! I think I had assumed that younger wines would automatically be astringent and sharp, but this had a great mouth feel. There was no "bite" or heat of alcohol to it, and we found it to be light, airy, and sweet at the end. I actually managed to detect a slight caramel aftertaste to it, which I am rather proud of since I usually have such a hard time tasting the things that labels/sommeliers describe. Marin and I specifically forbid ourselves to read the descriptions on the back of the bottles beforehand so that we could really try to come up with our impressions ourselves. So, yay us. *pats self on back*

We then munched on some bacon-wrapped asparagus and tried the wine again. We found that it really complemented the bacon! The wine really brought out the smokiness of the bacon, which in turn accentuated the fruitiness of the wine. The salty-sweet combo really worked here. I'd definitely do this pairing again!

Apothic Crush + bacon = LOVE

We then moved onto our main course: the baked ziti. We tried to go full-fledged Italian with this one and so paired the ziti with a bottle of 2013 Da Vinci Chianti found at Kroger for $11.99. 

Da Vinci 2013 Chianti

Pre face-stuffing, we really noticed the alcohol in the nose of this wine. A few swirls later we were able to detect hints of plum too. Tasting without food, we picked up on the fact that it wasn't as smooth as the first wine, and that it had cherry notes. It also had a really biting, peppery finish.

All the cheesy goodness

With the ziti, we saw the hidden sweetness of the wine come out. Like the first wine, there was a good salty-sweet thing going on as the fatty cheese opened up the wine. The cheese cut out a lot of the sharpness we had before and we could pick up on more berry notes. That definitely improved the chianti, but overall we weren't that impressed. It was just a "meh" wine. I wrote in my notes, "Nothing special, doesn't blow our minds". I guess we were let down after the amazing appetizer pairing!

Mar and her ziti!

Wine dinner selfie!

After a very long digestion break, we moved on to the final course: dessert. We paire the tiramisu with a bottle of sweet Colombo Marsala. We chose this for several reasons. First, neither of us had ever had fortified wine and wanted to try it. Second, Marsala is apparently a traditional Italian aperitif/digestif. Third, the bottle we found was actually imported from Italy *ooh spiffy*. And finally, it was on sale. (*help us, we're poor*). 

But anyway, we had slightly high expectations for this.

We were so, so, wrong.

So smelling this before tasting our dessert, we thought it smelled "raisiny", like black currant, and spice. And rubbing alcohol. This smelled so boozy it made me want to gag. Looking at the label we noticed that Marsala has a whopping 18% alcohol content! WHOA. This gave me literally no desire to taste it. But taste it I did, like every good Geography of Wine student should. 

It was simultaneously sickly sweet and spicy, and burned like hell because of the alcohol. We then tried it with the tiramisu, and it was *surprise* HORRIBLE. I wrote a huge "NO" in my notes for this one. The level of the alcohol completely overpowered the subtle cream and espresso notes of the tiramisu. Never again. Ever.

Disgusting bottle of death!

Over all, this was another great wine dinner! Or the finale was entertaining at least. The Apothic Crush was beyond delicious! I'll definitely be picking that up again in the future. The chianti was just mediocre. I won't completely write off chianti from my future though, because I always like to try things twice in case my palate or opinions have changed. Maybe 2013 wasn't a good year for Chianti, or maybe Da Vinci is a mediocre winery. There will have to be more chianti in my future in order to figure that out! Marsala, however, will never pass my lips again. Ever. I should have known since I don't like liquor or boozy things, but hindsight is 20/20 I suppose. This was another great exploration into wine and cuisine; I'll definitely have to but some significant thought into the next dinner in order to choose a great theme that stands up to to this and the previous wine dinner! 

Until next time!