Wine Dinner 2

March 08, 2022

Wine:

1. Malbec - Piattelli Vineyards

This wine immediately gave off scents of berries, with most prominent probably being blueberry. The tannins were mild but it was still a little bit dry, and the body was medium to soft. The finish opened up a smoky aftertaste.

2. Cabernet Sauvignon - Substance WA

This wine was not as thick as I would expect Cabernet Sauvignon to be. It had more of a watery quality, and this makes sense because the vintage year was less than five years ago. Semi-sweet, kind of in the middle of the sweet and dry spectrum, and with a very tangy aftertaste. Scents of specifically grape were weirdly prominent.

3. Merlot - Bogle Vineyards

This is definitely the kind of wine that you want to have with food. It is an okay Merlot by itself, but its dry and tannic quality, albeit with some fruitiness thrown in, creates a sort of need for something more on the palette. Very light body, fitting the almost see-though red color, and the scents are that of cherries and maybe even plums.

The 3 wines used for the dinner.

Dinner:

The dinner is composed of cheese-stuffed mushrooms, peppered chicken, fresh baby cucumbers with sliced tomatoes, and toasted baguette bread.

1. The Malbec provided mixed feelings for me during the dinner. While it worked very well with some foods, like the chicken, creating a contrast between something slightly dry and spiced up with something also slightly dry but sweet. I feel like it neither added nor removed flavor from the bread, and it definitely interfered with the vegetables, as expected. The cheese in the mushrooms was "opened up" with this wine.

2. Since this wine is a relatively light Cabernet Sauvignon, then it was almost a natural pair to this dinner. The tannins in the wine and the dryness of it, combined with the lack of body provided a perfect addition to the chicken and mushrooms. Even the bread combined well with it, opening up the fruity flavors that the wine hid beneath the dryness.

3. This Merlot was similar to the Cabernet Sauvignon in both body and tannic quality, and thus made an almost equivalent contribution to adding to this meal. I would argue that it released different flavors in the food because, for example, the neutral baguette absorbed the cherry flavor of the wine, so it was like eating fancy Kool-aid.