Crab cakes to cupcakes

     Ahhhh spring break: a wonderful time of relaxation and recuperation. However, I did not have same budget as my other collegiate colleagues and could not take a lavish cruise to 27 islands, so instead I enjoyed the comfort of my own home, family and pets for a week. I, of course, persuaded them to embark on another wine dinner! Yay!

Mom, Anna (sister) and Jake (brother)
sampling the appetizer

The appetizer and bordeaux

     The appetizer this time was a cheese and fruit plate. We went for a Bucheron goat cheese with harvest wheat crackers, red table grapes and a bosc pear. The wine was a grand reserve 2014 Côtes de Bordeaux from Chateau La Grange Clinet. It was very dry with a really leathery taste and had flavors and aromas of red berries and jam. It was delightful. Since our appetizer has a lot of parts, I'll go piece by piece. The grapes were so light and had a delicate sweetness that was completely overwhelmed by the wine. The pear was a better pairing (pear-ing...lol) because it was a bit over ripe and had a very intense sweetness that balanced the heft and dryness of the wine. The goat cheese, which is famously salty and tart, competed with the strength of the wine. They were both very intense in their own way and, unfortunately, did not compliment each other. The bordeaux was heavy and not acidic enough to match the tart cheese.

Main course: crab cake, potato
medley and apremont wine
ft. jake's eyes

     I was a very happy camper for this next course as we had found a Savoie Apremont in the grocery store!!! My favorite! More specifically, it was a 2015 Apremont from Les Rocailles- Pierre Boniface. It's a mild, crisp, mostly dry wine with floral flavors and aromas and a honeydew melon taste. My mouth still waters thinking about it. Our meal to go alongside it was crab cakes and a roasted

My family: Me, Mom, Anna, Jake, and
Dad sat down for the main course. 

potato/tomato/onion/basil medley. Crab has quite a light, slightly sweet and fishy flavor, that when tasted alone with the wine, paired beautifully. However, when I dunked it in spicy cocktail sauce, it overpowered the wine. Now, I've known for some time that white wine from Savoie compliments potato dishes nicely. I knew this mainly because tartiflette (potato, cheesy, bacon-y goodness) is the Savoie regions' most famous dish. I was therefore not surprised when the wine went beautifully with the potatoes. 

Tawny port with coconut cupcake

   
     Lastly, I took to the oven again and made some cupcakes. This time they were coconut cupcakes with a hint of almond extract and cream cheese icing. My parents generously shared their W&J Graham's 10 year old tawny port to sample with the dessert. The port was nutty and tasted of caramel and anise. It also didn't linger too long on the palate and complimented the cupcake. The two together tasted buttter and nutty and satisfied my sweet tooth perfectly. Til the next edition of Participatory Parents... santé!

What cheese would you use to coax a bear out of the woods?

Camembert!!

     Now that that necessary evil is out of the way, let's get on to the wine and cheese tasting...yum. My friend Miles and I split up the jobs of getting the cheese and the wine for this particular tasting and I was in charge of cheese. Being a cheese enthusiast, I was very much up for this task. I explored the cheese section of "gucci" Kroger and picked three delicious sounding fromages while my friend was finding us some various wines to sample.

Miles posing while tasting the parmesan
 and pinot grigio

   
     Our first pairing was parmigiano reggiano with the Californian Bota Box pinot grigio. The parmesan has quite a strong nutty flavor with a salty bite. It wasn't the worst pair for the wine but it definitely wasn't the best. The wine was fruity and light with a sweet honey taste. One of the things I love most about parmesan is it's strength of flavor and the wine, unfortunately,  washed away that intense bite. I think a much better pairing would be a much more dry and acidic wine that compliments the tart cheese.

The blue cheese and moscato

     We then moved to another sweet wine with Sutter Homes moscato. This wine had flavors of peaches and figs and tasted like summer in a glass. The cheese I had chosen was a tangy, salty blue cheese. It is classified, methinks, as a "stinky" cheese but it was deliciously creamy and little bit smokey. This was my favorite pairing of the evening because the tanginess of the cheese harmonized beautifully with the sweet wine. I already love the paring of blue cheese with fresh figs as a summer snack and the figgy-ness of this wine was a delighful balance to the cheese without overpowering it.

The camembert and pinot noir

     The last cheese was a camembert, no doubt inspired by my time in France. It's stinky and rich and creamy and amazing (<- what a totally unbiased opinion). It's a very strong cheese and I much prefer it to be showcased and merely highlighted by the wine I'm eating it with. Unfortunately the wine my dear friend had chosen had not accomplished that for me. The Original Dark Horse 2015 pinot noir that we paired with it was very jammy with dark berry flavors and had a warm spice to it when tasted alone. It really competed with the stinky, almost moldy, strength of the cheese. Again, I would have preferred a drier and perhaps earthy wine to pair this cheese with. Until my next awful food pun...santé!

The Gurg-a-later

(from the left) Me, my brother, mother
and father enjoying our dinner.

     This past weekend I treated myself to a few days back in my hometown of Richmond with my family and 6 adorable small creatures, most normal people call them pets. One of the things I miss most when I'm at school is my home. And when I say home, I mean my kitchen. My apartment here in Blacksburg is great and the kitchen is nice but as a plucky young girl wearing braids and gingham once said "There's no place like home". So, I invited my parents to participate in a 'wine dinner' with me and we decided to celebrate the record 80 degree heat by breaking out the grill.

Our appetizer: pico de gallo, guacamole
and the King Estate wine.

The family sat down for appetizers.
My brother, feeling left out from
the wine glass club, drinking his
lemonade-OJ concoction
out of a goblet.

   
    We started our meal with a small, classic Simon family appetizer of guacamole and pico de gallo. I decided to pair our chips and dips with a crisp, chilled white wine. More specifically, the 2014 King Estate pinot gris from Oregon. Much to my family's enjoyment, the pico de gallo was quite fresh and the sweet tomatoes contrasted well with the hint of spicy chili. Slightly stronger, the guacamole also had a delicious spice to it with jalapeño and serrano peppers. Continuing the description train, the wine was dry and quite citrus-y with notes of pineapple and and apple. Though I was originally uneasy about the idea of pairing wine with spicy mexican food, I was pleasantly surprised with how the wine didn't compete with the heat at all. On the contrary, it was very refreshing and the notes of citrus in the wine complimented the lime in the two dips. A red wine would have been much too heavy, I think, and a sweeter white would probably have offered to much of a stark contrast with the spice. Therefore, the parents and I were pleased with the pairing and continued enjoying our light appetizer.

The burgers and all their
fixin's.

Artsy shot of my burger, wine
and mother.

Our dinner wine and two of our
"gurg-a-laters". A term we coined, and nevertheless
still use, before I learned the proper
term in this class.

     Now, onto the main course. As I mentioned earlier, it was a lovely, sunny February day so we decided to send Dad outside to grill burgers. Our toppings of choice for the evening were the usual ketchup, mustard and pickles, but also my favorite spicy pimento cheese from Costco and some crispy bacon. The wine we paired our meal with was the 2015 Clos du Bois pinot noir from California. The burgers were a delicious reminder of summer and they paired beautifully with the weather...but perhaps not so well with the wine. The wine alone was quite nice with strong aromas of vanilla and red berry. When tasted alone, it served up more of a warm spice than anything too sickly sweet. However, when I sampled it with the burger, the sweetness of the wine was almost overwhelming. The spice of the cheese contrasted quite strongly with the sweet, jam-like wine, making a subpar pairing. Upon further exploration, I decided to taste the wine with just a piece of the bacon and I was pleasantly surprised. Just like how the terms maple bacon and salted caramel make opposite, delicious sense, so did this duo. Overall, not a bad wine at all, but it may have been more suited to a dessert or sweet appetizer instead of the hearty, savory burger.

My red velvet cupcake and the dessert wine.

     Moving to my personal favorite part of any meal, the dessert: red velvet cupcakes topped with cream cheese icing made by yours truly. My mom actually surprised me by cracking open a nice bottle of raspberry dessert wine from The Williamsburg Winery that she had recently purchased. Now, if you were ever wondering what it tasted like to drink a slightly alcoholic raspberry and you're curious sample it yourself, buy this wine. If you'd rather just take my word for it, just know that it's an extremely pleasant sipping beverage that I would highly recommend to any raspberry lover. It is a rather sweet wine but it finishes with a tart, cranberry-like bitterness. Red velvet cake has a chocolate cake base and the combination of raspberry paired better with the chocolate than any valentine's strawberry could have ever hoped for. The two flavors together reminded me of my favorite raspberry chocolate chunk ice cream that I used to get at Bev's in Richmond.

   


     Overall, my family and I enjoyed our delightful summer meal in February, even if my poor parents  and brother spent it coping with my constant photographic interruptions. Bless them...and santé!

Savoyard Savant?

     To whom it may concern... bonjour and bienvenue to my blog all about the wonderfully rich subject of wine! My name is Rachel Simon and, although I'm a french major and do not typically study geography, I am excited to be a student of a Geography of Wine class at Virginia Tech. This course graciously encouraged me to create this blog to document my thoughts, experiences and excitements about this hallowed beverage. And so I'll begin with some brief notes on where I've been, where I'm at and, what I'm looking forward to in my wine journey...

     I was raised in a household where a glass of wine was the preferred drink of choice each night at the dinner table. Although I personally did not take part in this ritual until mid high school (don't worry kids-it's legal in your home with your parents permission), it was very much a part of my family's 'dinner culture' if you will. When I did start drinking wine, my naive palette knew just a couple of things: I preferred red wine but found it difficult to drink a warm-ish beverage with a hot meal, white wine gave me headaches, and rosé was considered sweet tasting swill by my more experienced parents. It is safe to say that these first impressions have definitely evolved over the years. I do still love a rich red wine but have realized that my need for something cold to drink with dinner wasn't just a phase. Therefore, more often than not, a tall glass of ice water accompanies my meal alongside my red wine of choice. However, this step isn't necessary when I pair my meal with a crisp, chilled white- something I'm proud to say neither me nor my head fear any longer (I guess that one was just a phase). Lastly, after some help from my older sister's encouragement, (she followed a wine training course when she was waitress at a high-end restaurant) we have managed to work some delicious rosé wines into our dinner rotations.

     On a similar note, my experience with wine as a meal companion was also greatly fostered by the birth of my little brother when I was 10. With this new, adorable beast, however, came some time conflicts with our vital family dinners. First of all, my mother is an amazing, badass businesswoman and as such, arrives home at 6pm every night after a day of breaking glass ceilings. My father, while expertly gifted in literally every other subject, is verging on hopeless in the kitchen and, if you weren't familiar with newborns/infants, they do go to bed quite early in the evening so as to rest from being so cute and tiny all day. You might have figured out where I'm going with all of this by now. My sister, 2 years my senior, and myself found ourselves in the kitchen every night, making sure a meal was ready in the window of time when my wonderful family were all home, awake and hungry. This means that I made a (proper) meal for my family every night for about 6-8 years, including my 2 years as a solo chef when my sister went off to college. Thus, my verging-on-obsessive passion for food and everything that goes into making a meal was only bolstered by my family's love of wine. I began incorporating it into my dishes like my family favorite bolognese sauce (a dry red- quite often a cabernet sauvignon) and my (literal) award-winning potato leek soup (a crisp, dry white- preferably a pinot grigio). Soon, my family found itself enjoying fine cuisine (if I do say so myself) paired with a glass of wine each night- boosting my love for the whole shebang even more.

     A bit more recently, I made a huge leap in my wine journey. I studied in France at Université de Savoie Mont-Blanc for this past fall semester to further my 9 year education and passion for the french language. I lived in the small-ish city of Chambéry (the blog's background is of a neighboring city called Annecy), surrounded by the breathtaking french Alps, right at the hub of the department of Savoie. Now, Savoie is a very special place with it's strong swiss-alp influences, focus on agriculture, and of course it's specialty cheeses, dishes, and most importantly, wines. I will not shy away from saying that I took full advantage of my 300 euro/month stipend for food, the large selection of 2 euro wine bottles in the supermarket, and the plethora of wine and cheese pairing possibilities to sample during my time abroad. I learned many things while I was across the pond, but perhaps the most important of which is that no one makes a white wine better than Savoie, France. From reasonably priced, delicious Chignins to cheap, crisp Apremonts- my palette and wallet were absolutely spoiled rotten.

    Now that I'm back in the States, I'm thrilled to be continuing my exploration of the infinite wonders that wine has to hold. I am hoping to gain a more sophisticated tongue when it comes to expressing my feelings about a particular wine, how to expertly choose and purchase a wine that I'll actually enjoy, and how to vocalize those wonderful tastes and smells I experience when I go back to France and reunite with my beloved Savoie white.

Until my next wine discovery... santé!