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| Our three wine we used to pair with the food |
Well this was barrels of fun (get it... wine barrels...pun-intended)! One of the main take aways that we all agreed upon was that old world wines need to be with food. Maybe not all of them, but in our experience, most of them. New World wines can be drank on their own and don't change as much with food. So here are my wine reviews + my wine reviews with the food pairing (later I'll give my overall impressions)
1.
Valpolicella Classico: When I had this before food, I was so unhappy. This wine was terrible to me. It was super spicy and kind of reminded me of iced tea. It smelled leathery and was really dry and earthy tasting. I've never had a wine like this before and hopefully will not again. Good thing it was super cheap at the Vintage Cellar. This was my buy and I made chicken fajitas with it. The fajitas had flour tortilla and bell peppers and salsa. When I asked the guy at Vintage Cellar what I should pair with it, he looked at me a little weird but then pointed this wine out for me. When we ate it with food, the taste of the wine blended in with the food! It was amazing how I thought it was undrinkable without food but then when I drank it with food, I enjoyed it. I didn't really notice the taste of the wine, but it brought the flavor of the salsa out more in the fajitas. Pretty neat stuff.
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How I kept track of what everything tasted like
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2.
Milton Park Shiraz: Before food, this new world Shiraz was delightful (especially after that last one). It smelled slightly like citrus and not fruity or floral. It wasn't very spicy or anything like that to the taste. I could perceive some acidity but all in all it was smooth and mild and highly drinkable. This comes back to my hypothesis that new world wines don't need food... when we drank this wine with the ground beef + spaghetti sauce + noodles it didn't really change. It also didn't really add anything to the food. I mean it was fine that I was drinking it with this tomato based meal, but it really didn't enhance any flavors in the food or the wine.
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| All of us enjoying the food + wine |
3.
Tinto Figaro Red Wine: Another old world wine that I was upset to be drinking without food. It was sour and chalky and burnt and nasty. Pretty tannin intensive to me (although the other peeps were saying it wasn't... maybe I had already had too many glasses at this point). We then drank this with lasagna (cooked in the microwave in true college kid style). This was interesting because now we were trying an old world wine with a tomato based dish instead of the new world wine like the shiraz. The food didn't help this time really. I think it was it more pucker inducing and didn't gell well with the food like the first one did. Maybe it wasn't ment to be paired with this type of food... who knows.
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| Some more friends joined and my dog |
All in all, this was a great experience! It was so fun to try our hand at being sophisticated wine drinkers, pairing food and being smart. It was nice just to have it my apartment too because we had the basketball games on in the background and played music and goofed around. Not as stuffy as going to a restaurant but with the same educational effects. We are definitely going to do it again and this time, since we had so much fun, we will be able to convince more people to do it with us which = more wines and more food!
XOXOVINO, LJ
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| Our Lovely photographer/wine drinker. |
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| Action Shot! |
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| Cooking! |
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