Wine and Cheese Pairing #1

All of our wine and cheese
pairings!

The Sutter Home White Zinfandel
is from California.  This medium-
sweet wine goes great with spicy
foods such as Asian or Latin. A
750mL bottle is $6.00.

This week, my roommate Charlotte, who is also in our class and I decided to do a wine and cheese pairing. Since I supplied the wine for our wine and dinner pairing last week, her mom supplied us with wine and cheese for our tasting this week! It was nice to have someone's mom pay for it for us, so thank you to her! We chose to use the tiny bottles of wine, in case we didn't like it so we wouldn't waste any. We paired them with the Sargento tasting size cheeses because they were the perfect size to taste with those little bottles of wine.

The first pairing we did was Sutter Home White Zinfandel with Sargento Bruschetta Jack cheese. The wine by itself had a very sweet smell, and floral. It smelled like a walk through the garden. This wine had a very sour taste. The taste while both sweet and sour had a berry like taste. I have tasted White Zinfandel before and really didn't like it, so I was pleasantly surprised by the sweet and sour taste. The cheese had a very creamy texture, however the overwhelming taste I got from the cheese was a tomatoey flavor. After tasting the cheese, I sipped some more wine to see how the cheese affected the taste of the wine. The cheese made the wine's taste much less pungent. It really cut the sweetness of the wine. I think the cheese was a little bit too flavorful for this fruity wine, however I did enjoy the fact that it cut the sweetness a little bit.

The Sutter Home Moscato
is from California's Central
Valley.  This sweet wine pairs
well with light cheeses.  A
750 mL bottle is $6.00.

Our second pairing was the Sutter Home Moscato with Sargento Garlic and Herb Jack cheese. The wine had a lightly sweet smell, but much less sweet than any other moscato I have had. It had a very earthy smell. The wine didn't taste very sweet, which surprised me because most moscatos are almost overwhelmingly sweet. The wine had a very earthy taste. It had a strong grape like taste. The cheese had an overwhelming taste of garlic, but it was also very creamy and delicious. I thought this cheese brought out the sweetness of the wine. It made the wine taste much sweeter, more like what I would expect a moscato to taste like. I thought this cheese accentuated the grape tastes of the wine.

Third, we paired Barefoot Chardonnay with Sargento Aged Vermont White Cheddar cheese. The wine had a very buttery smell. It smelled like it would be slightly bitter. When I tasted the wine, it had a very buttery, creamy taste. It had a bitter finish and was slightly dry, but not too dry. The cheese was extremely creamy, but also slightly bitter. I was not a fan of this pairing because after tasting the cheese, drinking more of the wine I found that it brought out the dryness of the wine. This cheese brought out the bitterness of this wine. I am not a fan of bitter, dry wines, so I wouldn't pair these together again.

Barefoot Chardonnay is from
California.  This medium-
bodied wine pairs well with
fresh fruits and light seafood.
A 750mL bottle is around $6.50.

I had a really good time doing these pairings. I think we learned a lot about how to pair cheeses and wines because we now have a better idea of what types of cheeses go well with what types of wines. I think the Chardonnay and White Cheddar pairing taught us that we shouldn't pair wines and cheese of similar flavors and textures because they surprisingly conflict. I thought the more flavorful wines went better with the more flavorful cheeses.