Wine Dinner #1

This was my first wine dinner ever and I had a great time. This wine and dinner was done with my friend who is also taking the wine class in the picture above. We had three different wines that we have never tasted and three different food courses. The first course which was an appetizer was paired with a dry wine, the course was paired with a semi-sweet wine, and finally, the desert was paired with a sweet sparkling wine. 

Our appetizer was an Italian high roller which was purchased from the West End dining hall on the Virginia Tech campus. This was a weird tangy wrap which was overpowered by the taste of the mustard that they put in it. It wasn't a really great roll in my opinion. This wrap was paired with Trinity Oaks Chardonnay. This was a dry wine on its own so the taste wasn't really overpowered by the strong mustard taste in the wrap. I feel like the wine and the wrap paired well together because they were both bitter/dry. The wine and the wrap balanced each other very well. The wine was light-bodied in my opinion so it had some kind of richness to it that I liked a lot. Chardonnay to me always gets me tipsy so the bread in the appetizer was a great compliment because it helped out with the  balancing of the alcohol content in the wine. 

 Next, the main course. For the main course we went African style. We made spicy broiled chicken, which was made from fresh vegetables and pepper, and we ate this with white jasmine rice and green pepper sauce made from Ghana (country in West Africa). We paired this spicy main course with Chateau des Muraires Seduction. This was a pale pink 2016 rose from cotes de Provence, Provence, France. This was a semi-sweet wine, but it was mostly on the dry side of wine. It was the perfect amount of sweet though that could went well with the spiciness of the chicken. The richness of the wine really brought out the flavor of the chicken and made the chicken even more juicier than it already was. The wine was very acidic on its own which I really liked so when we ate it with the green pepper and the rice, the taste of the pepper wasn't overwhelming. The main course was really balanced nicely with the wine. 

 The desert was my favorite part. We paired the chocolate coated strawberries with a very sweet bubbly wine. Sweet bubbles by Lobetia was a sweet and fruity sparkling wine from La Mancha, Spain and had strong berry tastes so it tasted amazing with the strawberries. The wine was a mix of Chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, and Viura.  The strawberries were very sweet and ripe so that made the taste of the wine even stand out more. Once the desert was paired with the wine, the richness of the wine came out more and you could taste the lemony undertone of the wine which made it an even more amazing experience. The bubbles in the wine alone wasn't strong, it was light so it was quite refreshing with the fruits. Overall it was a great ending to the wine dinner.