Wine Dinner One

 Wine Dinner 1

The gang and I decided to boldly defy wine traditions and blaze a new path for our first wine dinner. We had one person cook up some food while the other three chose bottles of wine, so there was no real idea of the kinds of pairings we'd have beforehand. We ended up with some stew beef, carrots, and potatoes as our dishes and three interesting bottles of wine.

Beef, carrots, and potatoes on a plate

Our first bottle of wine was a Gnarly Head zinfandel (Figure 1), which I chose solely based off it's name and pretty label. The Gnarly Head had some fairly strong berry/cherry scents along with a little spice. I also thought it smelled a little dusty, which is the best word I could find to describe what I smelled. By itself, the Gnarly Head had a light berry taste and was moderately dry. I thought it tasted decent by itself, but it really shined with the carrots. The carrots were fairly soft and sweet, which paired well with the sweetness and dryness of the wine. The flavors complemented each other well without drowning each other out. The beef and potatoes were both much more hearty, and with the fatty stew broth, they seemed to slightly overpower the flavors of the wine.

Figure 1: Gnarly Head Zinfandel

Our next bottle was a Myles And Moore cabernet sauvignon (Figure 2). It had some fairly strong cherry and chocolate scents, and also smelled a bit acidic and vinegary (it burnt my nose hairs a little). By itself, the cherry flavor came through with slight hints of dark chocolate and vanilla. This wine paired well with the stew beef as the fat helped mask the harsher flavors of the wine, but didn't overpower the wine. The potatoes had a similar effect but to a lesser degree, which I found tasted mediocre. The sweet carrots seemed completely overpowered by the acidity of the wine, which made the combo fairly unpleasant.

Figure 2: Myles and Moore

Our final bottle was a Duplin cotton candy flavored wine (Figure 3). It smelled of berries with some caramel and bubblegum mixed in, but the berry flavor smelled kind of artificial and chemically. The taste was surprisingly bitter but calmed down quickly with apple, bubblegum, and a little spice. It also tasted a bit like plastic, which all of us noticed pretty quickly. The wine's overall sweetness paired decently with the sweet carrots, but the bubblegum flavor still made it a strange pairing. The meat and potatoes both seemed to emphasize the sweetness of the wine and drown out the more wine-y flavors, which led to a bad pairing. It might have been good with some sort of pastry, but it did not pair well with any sort of non-desert type food.

Figure 3: Cotton Candy Wine

Next time, I want to have more variety in the food I try with the different bottles of wine we choose. I think I will try to go for some sort of seafood and have at least one type of dessert present.