Advantages of a Wine Dinner

Splitting a bottle of wine with my spouse at dinner is a regular practice at my house. Over the weeks and months we get to enjoy a wide sampling of styles, regions, and grape varietals. But this sort of tasting makes it more difficult to taste the differences. For that, you need to have several bottles open at the same time, and that is where the wine dinner party offers some advantages!

To justify opening all those bottles you need enough people to drink them, and enough food courses for a range of pairing choices. Eight to a dozen people can each get a large enough sip from a single bottle to appreciate the taste and flavours. Five or more courses will give you lots of pairing choices.

Having multiple course also allows you to taste some wines that you normally miss, but deserve your attention, such as dessert wines, sparkling wines (a good choice for reception and finger foods), and stuff like sherry (which is extremely versatile in food pairings).

We recently hosted such a dinner party with eight people. Here’s the menu:

• Cedar-planked scallops & sparkling wine
• Curried chicken pizza & oak-aged Chardonnay
• Strawberry soup & Gros Manseng
• BBQ pork ribs, potatoes, and bean salad & Pinotage, a mainly Syrah Tuscan IGT, and a Cab from Chile
• Cranberry squares and a selection of cheeses & Riesling auslese

and a close up of all the wine labels.

The Champagne went very well with the scallops, and the three reds were all well suited to match with the rich, tasty ribs. The Auslese was delightful on its own, but perhaps even better with the fruit squares and some Munster cheese. For me the Pouilly-Fuissé did not have enough body to match the flavourful pizza – a new world selection may have fared better here. I was trying to match the soft fruit character of the soup with similar aromatics from the Gros Manseng, but I should have chosen an off-dry version for a better match, rather than the dry style pictured.

Great pairings or merely okay, it was both an enjoyable and educational experience, and all the better for sharing it with friends!

Wine Note

We usually associate Malbec with Argentina, and no doubt it’s success in that country is sparking interest next door in Chile. A recent arrival from there is the Santa Luz Gran Reserva Malbec 2013 (NLC $20.70). The wine shows typical varietal characteristics with a deep purple-black colour, ripe smooth tannins, and bounteous black and red bramble fruit. Well worth a try! Score 15.5/Very Good.