And the winners are...

We had our last wine night on Thursday, featuring the winner from each week. Up to now, we'd been tasting one varietal per week, so it was a nice change to try a range of different wines. We also got ambitious, and paired almost every wine with some food. It was a lot of fun to cook with Kerri and Courtney. And it was even more fun to sit around with everyone and eat, drink and be merry. I'm going to miss our crew here when I leave.

We started with champagne:
Yarra Burn Sparkling Pinot Noir / Chardonnay, paired with fruit and cheese


Next we had Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Riesling, paired with my friend Malina's white bean dip and home made pita chips. As always, it was a hit, so big shout out to Malina.




Then came the West Cape Howe Sauvignon Blanc for which Courtney made yummy asparagus, prosciutto and smoked gouda rolls. This was when we learned two things: 1) Australia sells neither Pillsbury cresent rolls nor phyllo dough. 2) don't leave the oven on broil by accident.






Wirra Wirra "Scrubby Rise" Chardonnay got paired with what would normally have been phyllo dough pizettas with tomato, havarti and olives. We used puff pastry as the dough instead, which made things interesting.







Innocent Bystander Pinot Noir was so damn good, I have to retract my statement that I don't like pinot. Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the wine that had preceeded it, but mostly, I think that's just a damn good wine. That one got put with Courtney's spicy chicken and jalepeno dip.






The Cover Drive Cabernet Sauvignon went with spicy meatballs. We put Benedetta in charge of making the sauce, but it was a hard sell convincing an Italian to ruin a perfectly good tomato sauce with cumin and tabasco. In the end, though, we'd convinced her it was worth it, and the meatballs turned out well.

Elderton Shiraz went with water. At this point we all needed a little break.



d'Arry's Original Shiraz Grenache. At Casey's suggestion we served this with dark chocolate. Yumm.

I threw in a bottle of sparkling desert with to cap off the evening. I had bought the Peterson House Sparkling Botrytus Semillon when we were up it Hunter Valley. Definitely part of Australia's fascination with making all sorts of strange sparkling wines. But it was sweet and yummy, and went really nicely with the bruscetta with blue cheese and honey that Kerri made.
So that was our all-stars evening. Definitely a good note to end on. I hope that someday I had the chance to do something like our wine club again.