December | 2014 | NWWblogger NEW WORLD WINES

It’s been awhile, life gets busy and you lose track of your passions, food and wine! Although I have had some good wines over the past year, there seems to have become a real price gap from good wines to GOOOD WINES! Yes, we continue to hunt for the best $20 bottle of wine that we can drink on a regular basis, those unfortunately are few and far between. It seems that 40 is the new 20 and if you keep that in mind and buy a few bottles 6-12 then drinking them throughtout the next 2-4 years makes spending the money up front much more palatable.
So , tonight is a reclaimation of wines cellared and food pairings in mind when they were purchases, a few or more so years ago! Friends are coming over and we will be sharing this event with you and some of the thoughts about the wines, pairings and future suggestions of what you should be looking for when buying wines.
Preparing has been fun, everyone takes on tasks to make the meal a success. Tonight we are having :

Le Regence Oysters

Stuffed Mushroom Guac Poppers

Carpaccio Piemontese

Stufado with Pork Belly

Caramelized Pears with Tiramisu Cream

Along the way there is also a few cheeses that we have become aquainted with and enjoy regularly,they are Taleggio, Appenzeler & Chaumms. The stinker the better, I say!

It begins with

tenderloin

While preparing most of the sauces for the meal, the tasting of flavours like herbs and citrus notes are constant reminders of the wines that would go extremely well with the menu of food this evening.

tomato & Proscutto base

check back in a bit the day is just beginning…

guac poppers

mushroom poppers

The wines paired with this and the next course were a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand and a viognier from California, both with great structure, each different in complexity. However, the acids in both balanced out the flavours in the food.
They were both used with the dish below and wow, were they great with it. Lending to the overall flavour of the seafood and the sauce. We all agreed that the diversity went well with the one dish. Try this yourself some time:

oyster & scallop

Then we moved onto the Carpaccio and what a treat, we tried it with a few different wines of structure and age. The 2002 Darioush Cabernet was big and fruity, and the truffles from the carpaccio was perfect with this. The Spotteswoode (1998) was big and bold still, many French characteristics in the earthy tones , but still much life in the bottle. Once again, the greens and shallots from the dish really added to the character and complexity to the pairing, wonderful together!

Darioush

There was so much food and conversation that we didn`t get to the stufado, we will have it tomorrow. Yummy stew like soup that warms your heart and stomach.

So we ended the night with a pear tiramisu along with a Tawny Muscat from Australia.
They were so good together and put a wonderful cap on a truly gastronomic evening, full of great tastes and flavours.