Wine and Dinner Pairing #2

I did this second dinner pairing tonight with my boyfriend. We picked out a Shiraz, White Zinfandel, and a Cabernet Sauvignon to pair with an appetizer of crackers topped with hot and sweet mustard, habanero cheese and summer sausage, dinner of pesto pasta with grilled chicken and onions, and dessert of Ben&Jerry's Phish food. Every time I go to the grocery store I see these weird "juice boxes" of wine so I decided to try one tonight to compare to the normal bottles that I usually go with.

First we did an initial tasting of each of the three wines so we could get an idea of what we were dealing with.

Vendange Shiraz:

This wine smelled fruity like candied cherries and slightly sour. It tasted blander than we thought it would with a little bit of cherry and an alcoholic aftertaste that lingered. Not bad for a "juice box" of wine!









Bay Bridge White Zinfandel:

This wine smelled bland, a little flowery, and with no alcohol. Overall, it didn't have much of a nose. The taste was sugary, floral, light, some goat cheese aspects, and reminded us of artificial sweeteners. There was no aftertaste; no taste lingered at all.








Bay Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon:

This wine smelled fruity, bitter, like dark cherries, slightly alcoholic, and with some blackberry components. It tasted sugary, fruity: like cherries and blackberries, and with a little bit of alcohol that wasn't very overpowering. There was a slight bitter lingering aftertaste.









Next we paired each wine with our first course: crackers  topped with hot and sweet mustard, habanero cheese and summer sausage.

Shiraz: This appetizer brings out the bitterness of the wine, brings out the alcohol in the wine, and takes away any taste of fruit that was there before. The spicy cheese is all we can taste in the aftertaste. Really good; we thought the spiciness of the cheese went really well with this wine.
White Zinfandel: This appetizer takes away the sugary, artificial sugar taste of the wine leaving behind sweetness with no alcohol. Again, the spiciness in the cheese is all we detect in the aftertaste. This was a pretty good pairing, but nothing special.
Cabernet Sauvignon: This appetizer makes the wine very bitter leaving behind only a strong taste of alcohol and a lingering bitter aftertaste. Not good!

Next, we tasted each wine with out main course: pesto pasta with grilled chicken and onions.

Shiraz: This meal brought out sour notes in the wine however, we could still taste hints of cherry at the end. There was not a very drawn out aftertaste.
White Zinfandel: This meal brought out some sourness and alcohol taste in the wine that lingered afterwards. This food completely changed the flavor of the wine leaving behind a little sweetness but not too much flavor overall.
Cabernet Sauvignon: This dinner made the wine taste very sour with no sweetness and no aftertaste. There was a lingering alcohol taste however.

Finally, we paired each wine with our dessert: Ben&Jerry's Phish Food ice cream.

Shiraz: This pairing brought out the taste of fruit and alcohol in the wine however making the wine very sour. The ice cream overpowered the taste of the wine leaving no aftertaste of wine at all.
White Zinfandel: This pairing brought out some bitterness in the wine but the chocolate in the ice cream seems to overpower the flavor in the wine altogether. There was still some sweetness from the wine coming through however with no alcohol. This wine flavor cut through the strong flavor of the ice cream better than the Shiraz.
Cabernet Sauvignon: With this pairing we could only tasting the bitterness and alcohol in the wine with a sour aftertaste in our mouths even though the chocolate overpowered some of the sourness. Very bad pairing!