Wine and Cheese Pairing

     Recently some of my friends and I visited the Blacksburg Wine Lab to try some of the wines and cheeses available. This was the first time any of us had tried pairing wine and cheese, and our orders were somewhat of a shot in the dark. I ordered the Slightly Sweet Flight because I couldn't resist trying a blue wine. For the cheeses we ordered Manchego, woodbine, and an aged cheddar. 

    For this review I will go in the order of the wines served in the flight and attempt to explain what I thought each paired well with and why. Each wine depending on if it was sweet or dry paired very differently with the different cheeses which was very interesting.

Rinaldi Moscato de Asti:
    This wine had hints of apples and a bit of a vinegar after taste. It was very light and quite tart. Due to how light it was it paired very well with the Manchego which had a similar behavior. It had distinct flavors, somewhat sharp, but wasn't so strong it overpowered the wine. That was the case with the cheddar for this wine. The cheddar and the woodbine were too rich and completely overpowered the wine.

Principe Verdejo Frizzante:
    As shallow as it sounds, this wine smelled distinctly of grape juice. It had a pronounced berry flavor, akin to ripe black berries, as well as apples. This wine had a fuller body than the first wine and paired much better with the woodbine, but the cheddar was still too rich. It was a bit too strong for the Manchego, which made it a good middle point.

Rinaldi Redream Sweet Red:
    In the class the professor mentioned that there are some reds which have a flavor profile closer to a sweet white and this was a perfect example of that. It had a fuller body than the other wines which made it pair well with the cheddar. It was the only wine I tried which could match the strength of the cheddar, and as expected it was too strong for the other cheeses. This wine tasted like apples and had a vegetative aftertaste. There was also somewhat of a vinegar taste and something of a buttery consistency.
  

Conclusions
    This was a very good experience and I would definitely do it again. It was really enjoyable to have a goal of finding good pairings, and it was really satisfying once each pairing was found.





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