Wine and Cheese Blog 1

 

With a group of 5 friends, we together went to the Wine Lab to do the first pairing of wine and cheese. All of us got flights and split 3 cheeses between the table. I went with an all white wine flight, because after the dinner date and came to a conclusion that I'm not ready for red wines. The name of my flight was "White Light Flight" and wines were:

1. Raywood Chardonnay' 21 from California

2. First Light Chenin Blanc'22 from South Africa 

3. Bodegas Roijanas Monte Real Blanco'20 from Spain 

The Cheese were: 

• Vermont Honey Truffle
• Fromager D'Affinois Herb
• El Trigal Manchego
  

I will go wine by wine, explaining how it changed from before cheese, and after each of the three cheeses. Raywood Chardonnay was the first wine I tried. At first it smelled like apple cider, but tasted like bitter acid, or a very very not ripe apple. It had a lot of tannins and felt complex. The first cheese I tried it with was Manchego, which was the hard, rather bland cheese. As it was fatty, it made the bitterness side and the sweetness came through in the wine, some caramel notes came through. 

The next was the honey garlic. Personally, I disliked that cheese with a passion, it was too sweet, too garliky and too goaty. None of the three flavors were enjoyable to me, but I consumed it for the purposes of the experiment. The chardonnay somehow managed to make the already overwhelming cheese stronger in flavor, and it really opened the garlic flavors. 
Lastly it was the  fromager, which is a blue cheese. For this pairing, the cheese opened the wine more than the other way around. You could taste the cider side of the wine a lot and it made the wine more alcohol forward. 

The next wine I had was the Chenin Blanc. This wine smelled like paint thinner or whitener, it felt sort of oxidized, and didn't have terribly much acid. Overall before cheese it was not good. With Manchego cheese, nothing really changed, the wine was still odd. However, with fromager, the cheese tasted completely different, the wine opened a lot of complexity of the mold from the cheese. Honey truffle was the only cheese that made wine taste better, however, cheese stayed unbearable. 

Last wine of the night was Bodegas Roijanas Monte Real Blanco, before cheese it wasn't fruity, more

flowery and I got a bit of vanilla from it. It was quite sour overall. This wine was the first one to have opened flavors of the bland-ish Manchego and wine also became sweeter. It had the same affect on the fromager as Chenin Blanc, made the fungi taste much stronger and uncovered undertones of the cheese. The honey truffle made the wine less sour and balanced out the odd tasting cheese. 

Overall I really enjoyed the experiment, I really want to go again to the wine lab and do it without worrying about note taking and just enjoy the flavors and combinations they bring.