Wine Tastings are back! After taking a short break in January, we are returning to our Saturday tradition. We got a great deal of feedback from our customers who like to come in a bit later on Saturdays. In response, we are changing the timeframe for our free tasting to 1pm to 4pm. Now you can sleep in a bit if you want, okay? As a part of our new format, we will be featuring some food as part of it as well, including cheese from our Artisan Cheese Counter! Let’s take a look at the featured wines for this week:
Mardi Gras Wines! Is there such a thing, you ask? Well, we certainly can make it happen with picking the perfect pairing to go with classic New Orleans dishes:
Gumbo: 2012 Niepoort Twisted Douro, Portugal
From an excerpt from Wine Spectator magazine: “…elegant, rich, red fruit-driven wine that marries well with the complex spice component of the roux in the gumbo and the textures of the rice and andouille sausage….”. This is a bold, brazen but elegant partner that can stand up to rowdy character of good N’awlins Gumbo.
Oysters: 2013 Domaine des Cadastres Picpoul de Pinet, France
Picpoul de Pinet is a grape that grows right against the Mediterranean coast of Languedoc, France. Some of the vineyards of Picpoul de Pinet literally border oyster beds. In the evening, when the winds start to whip up and kick the heat of the day away, you can taste the salt in the air. Obviously, this ends up on many of the grapes and literally puts the taste of the sea into the bottle. Again, just like with Muscadet, the proximity of sea to vineyards, combined with the freshness and brightness of the wine, make for a stunning combination.