While Atlanta was being pounded by the great snow of ’09, a few friends gathered at our house for a blind wine tasting, hence the awesome double entendre in this post title. Pretty witty, eh? Actually, I was affected by snow blindness once and it straight sucked. I was totally blind for half a day. So stop laughing at my droll humor.
Since reading Dirty’s post on blind tasting, I’ve had the bug to put together a blind tasting. However, Master Po I am not, so the format was tweaked a bit to accommodate us wine mortals. We went with a varietal tasting format. Those hearty souls that braved the Atlanta roads to attend were each instructed that if they brought a wine, it should be of a single varietal, no funky 13 grape CDP blends.
While CDP is definitely identifiable, the goal of this tasting was not to figure out where the wine was from, but from which grape this wine was produced. This is definitely a doable task for most wine peeps, but this was a more social event, a fun way to introduce some new varietals, and a showcase for how side by side comparison is a fantastic way to learn the differences between varietals.
I only took a few photos as I was busy cooking and getting the wines ready, but luckily Broderick was in attendance and took some great shots for your viewing pleasure. In the photos below, if you see a good one, it’s his. 2-3 of the others are mine.
These “Big Easy” shrimp are always a crowd pleaser, and it’s very easy. Mix 3/4 cup melted butter, 1/4 cup Worcestershire, 1/4 cup ketchup, 2 Tbsp Old Bay, 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning, 2 Tbsp Asian Chili sauce, and 2 Tsp hot sauce. Lay some lemon slices in a roasting pan, top with 3lbs of shrimp, pour the sauce over it, then cook at 325 for 25 minutes. Turn the shrimp after 10 minutes. Serve with bread for soppin’ up the awesome sauce.
Crowded, but fun. I should have announced that when tasting a lot of wines, don’t pour yourself a whole glass. :-)
Meats and cheeses from Star Provisions. The cheeses were Constant Bliss, Big Woods Blue, and Ewephoria. The meats were toscana, hot soppressata, and finnochiona.
We tasted 15 wines, including a couple of cabs, chardonnay, riesling, garnache, shiraz, sauvignon blanc, zinfandel, gewurztraminer, viognier, pinot, and malbec.
The Soby’s cheese biscuits made another appearance.
I dabbled with some roasted pork belly from Star Provisions, which came out OK. The orange juice sauce was good but the bacon needed to be crispier.
Overall it was a good time. Some people were actually trying to guess the varietals, and I think those people had fun with that, but others were just hanging out and enjoying the company. I ended up getting 10 out of the 15 and was pretty happy with that. The reds proved to be a bit more difficult than the whites, especially as there were a handful of cabs. Shout out to Aaron for calling the viognier.
[nggallery id=30]
