Chez Danforth: Wine and Cheese and Cheese

Clockwise from 12: parm, young blue, ?, humboldt fog/olives. double creme brie, TJs cotswold double glo

 Mark hosted a wine and cheese tasting on Friday. He obtained four botellas de vino and five cheeses. I brought over two more cheeses and some cervezas. Despite the conversation that we had earlier in the week Mark chose not to follow the advice of Drink This author Dara Grumdahl and obtained four different kinds of wine, from BevMo, all under $10.

According to the first chapter of the book (which is all I've read) Grumdahl says the proper way to go about tasting and learning wine is to follow a specific plan, which primarily involves drinking multiple versions of the same grape (ie Zinfandel). Makes sense because as far as my limited knowledge goes, a Pinot Noir and a Merlot could be either very similar or very different, and your conclusions would be stunted because you are comparing apples and oranges (both sweet? one is acidic?). On the other hand if you drink the same type of grape from different vintages, vineyards, etc. you can look for similarities.

Dog tasting?

Grumdahl says to go out and buy 4 Zinfandels, one cheaper, one around $15 from the same vineyard as the cheaper one, another $15 bottle and then a $25 bottle (about $65 total). She also recommends placing scent clues in wine glasses, so that at your tasting table you have dirt, gunpowder, crushed rasberries, wet rocks, and so forth in wine glasses. I like that part.

Wine over beer?

In terms of wine and cheese, I have heard it said, admittedly by beer enthusiasts, that wine has such a complex taste that pairing it with a random cheese will mostly likely not result in a Level 2 taste experience (which is the highest that scale goes). It seems like just pursuing wine alone might be more profitable. In my experience this is true, which is why I stick to beer, as seen in the photo.

Many thousands of props to Mark for buying doubles of cheeses so that when we ran out, he just opened the fridge and pulled out another brick of Humboldt Fog. Cheese and bread makes for a seductive dinner, but next time we agreed we should eat first in order to quell the cheese lust that overwhelmed us for a few couple minutes.

Onion Dipping

Finally, I have to say that the Trader Joe's  Cotswold Double Gloucester with Onions tastes exactly like onion dip. I gave it to a couple of my students, and they willingly tasted and then agreed with the observation. Maybe TJs is riding the wave of the destruction of the low food-high food dichotomy. Soon we'll find it on restaurant menus in the Mission, sold for a premium thanks to its new name: Onion Dip Cheddar.