Wine & Cheese Tasting #1

Last night my girlfriends and I got together for our "Friendsgiving". We also thought it would be a perfect time for those of us in this class to do a wine and cheese pairing and of course welcome those not in the class to participate and teach them what we have learned. My friend Meg was put in charge of picking our wine and cheese assortment and she did a marvelous job! We had gouda, brie, and mozzarella along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. All the wines were of the brand Sutter Home, not a fancy line of wines but never the less it did the job and we had not analyzed them yet. 

We unpackaged the cheeses and tried our best to make our assortment look fancy! Our little mozzarella balls kinda freaked us out as they screamed processed!

The four packs of small wines were perfect for limiting waste and whatever we didn't drink we split amongst whoever wanted it and took home!

*we did pour all three wines into glasses for proper tasting*

Chardonnay & Brie

I am typically not a fan of chardonnay as it is usually too sweet for my palette but with the Sutter Home I was pleasantly surprised! It was drier and honestly I thought it was mislabeled and actually a Pinot Grigio ( I will get into that ones experience in a little). The Chardonnay was crisp, dry and green apple-y. Of course, the brie was the creamiest and stinkiest cheese of them all. The two put together did very little for the wine but increased that creamy personality of the brie.

Cabernet Sauvignon & Gouda

Gouda is one of my favorite cheeses so this was the section of the board my hand kept creeping over to the most. Both the Cab and Gouda are very powerful on their own and together dried each other out. The Cab (I almost just typed out Pinot Noir because that is what it tasted like) was creamy, bold, plumy and dark cherry, maybe even a darker more dry nut flavor too.

Pinot Grigio & Mozzarella

This was my least favorite option out of the three. Typically a very big fan of pinot grigios, I did not like the Sutter Home version. It was sweet and almost tasted like it had a little banana in there. No one else really agreed with that banana statement but it came to me and I could not get it out of my head! The mozzarella was was dry yet creamy, a little bit in the middle of the gouda and brie spectrums. Together the cheese lost that creamy aspect and wine stood out more.

I had a great time doing this with my girlfriends especially before we are separated for a week with Thanksgiving break. As low class it looked we had a blast and got some laughs out of it too!