A New Day

For those of you who know me, you know that I love great food and I love great wine.  But more than that I love sharing it with those who are important to me.

For a number of years, I've been hosting parties for friends and co-workers at my home, well you probably guessed by now, on Mondays.  I referred to those events as Monday's @ Mark's.  What this is really is an excuse to get a bunch of friends together and enjoy a relaxing evening with some good (sometimes great) wine and some tasty munchies.

I haven't really talked much about it but thought it's about time to share some great meals along with some great wines.

One of my friends, who's primarily a beer drinker, was asking some questions about wines that he and his wife might like.  After reviewing some basics (red vs. white, sweet vs. dry, etc) I suggested that we have an evening doing a white wine tasting with some of my favorite wines.

This was not an exhaustive tasting but I wanted to get some idea of what might or might not work for him so over the course of the night, we tasted 5 different white wines.  Now, to pair with the wines, I smoked a salmon and served it with rice and asparagus.  Pretty simple when you're using one of Cameron's stove top smokers.

Here was the line-up:

• Chamisal Vineyard's 2009 Stainless Chardonnay (a great wine for folks who struggle with the oak flavors found in wines that age in oak barrels)
• Chamisal Vineyard's 2008 Estate Chardonnay
• Chamisal Vineyard's 2008 Califa Chardonnay
• Seghesio Family Vineyard's 2009 Fiano
• Seghesio Family Vineyard's 2009 Pinot Grigio

 Now I'm not sure that we gave either of the Seghesio Family Vineyard's a fair sampling because we weren't just tasting the wines, we were drinking them one at a time until the bottle was finished.  Since there were five of us, we each ended up drinking a bottle a piece.  But here's what we found:

My friends discovered that not all wines, even of the same variety, taste the same.  It was an amazing difference between the unoaked Chardonnay and the oaked Chardonnay.  Both good but the stainless had such a light touch.  It's perhaps my new afternoon in the sun drinking wine.

Now frankly, you can't go wrong with any of these wines.  They were all delicious in their own ways but at the end of the day, my friend discovered a starting point for his foray into the world of wine drinking. Since this happened a few months ago, I'm a little fuzzy on all the details but future blogs will be much more specific.  Some may even have a few recipes. 

I'd love to hear your experiences of sharing food and wine with friends.  So if you have a great story, I'd love to hear it and if you have some great wines you think I should try . . . I'm all ears.