Dinner - Maple Ridge Apartments (Italy)

From left to right: Carl, me, Ian, with the three wines we
had with our meals.

For this wine and food pairing dinner, my friends Carl, Ian, and I all got together and shared an appetizer, main course, and a dessert together with a white wine, a red wine, and a dessert wine.

The Casesar salad we paired
with the Pinot Grigio as an
appetizer.

The first wine we tried, Redwood Creek Pinot Grigio.
Ian and I paired this wine with a Caesar Salad.

The first wine we tried was Redwood Creek Pinot Grigio from California, vintage 2013. It smelled very acidic and like melon rinds and citrus fruits. The taste was surprisingly pretty good. It was light, watery, semi-sweet but also tart, and semi-dry. Flavors of melons and citrus fruits shined through. We paired this wine with a Caesar salad kit. This Pinot Grigio paired well with the salad because it was such a light wine and did not overpower the flavors of the salad. However, the salad itself did not bring out any extra, initially undetected flavors in the wine.

Carl and Ian cutting the Meatlovers
Pizza, which we paired with the 2011
DaVinci Chianti. Their dog, Onxy,
is begging for food!

Meatlover's Pizza - Paired with
DaVinci Chianti from 2011.

Supreme Pizza, also paired with the
DaVinci Chianti.

DaVinci Chianti - 2011.

The Second wine we tried was DaVinci Chianti from 2011.

This wine is from Tuscany, Italy. On the nose, it smelled like

plums and dark, ripe fruits. It was very acidic-smelling. It 

tasted similar to how it smelled, like plums, blackberries

and cherries. It was a little hot and very tannic. We paired

this wine with two different kinds of pizzas - Meatlover's and Supreme (pictured above). With the Meatlover's pizza, some of the 

acidity went away and slightly more fruit flavors came through.

The Supreme Pizza had pretty much the same effect - it 

eliminated some acidity and enhanced the wine's plum flavors.

Overall, this wine seemed off-balanced to all of us and was

not very good, regardless of being a little better tasting with

the food.

Everyone enjoying pizza paired with DaVinci Chianti.

The third wine we had was Taylor Cream Sherry from New York, vintage 2013. It had an interesting color, which was orangey-brown. On the nose, it smelled creamy, like raspberries, and very alcoholic. It tasted sweet and creamy with flavors of hazelnut, toasted almonds, raspberries, figs, and a hint of toffee candy coming through. It's finish was very powerful and alcoholic. We paired this wine with chocolate cake for dessert, which together tasted like alcoholic raspberry truffles. There were also a bit more plum flavors in the sherry that cake through when it was paired with the cake. Overall, I did not like the sherry, but it was bearable with chocolate cake.

We paired Taylor Cream Sherry with our
chocolate cake. We all ended up hating
this particular cream sherry.

Indulging in chocolate cake with Taylor Cream
Sherry!

It was a lot of fun getting together to do the wine dinner! I think next time we would plan it a little bit better because it was sort of a last-minute thing and did not have enough time to make really awesome homemade dishes. We tried our best to pair the wine with foods we thought would be good, but obviously we have some more learning to do! Overall we had a lot of fun and I think it was a great learning experience.