Saturday Night – Kim cooks up a storm – Part 1

We had a change of venue this Saturday as Kim and John had the four of us over for dinner. I offered to bring the wine as our contribution to the dinner. Kim and I talked about the menu so I’d know which wines to bring.

"Cheese and Crab goodness!"

This pairing of the food and wines was an interesting exercise as usually I’m pairing wines to foods that I’m cooking. The advantage to doing the pairing when you are doing the cooking is you know exactly what is in each dish versus just have a vague idea of what the dish might be. The key to good food and wine pairing is taking a deeper look at the recipe to see what might or might not throw the wine pairing a curve ball.

Here is an example – let’s say Kim told me she was doing chicken as the main dish. There are lots of wines that would pair well with chicken, the trick is taking it to the next level. A chicken with mango salsa would be a nice pairing for a semi-sweet Riesling but a terrible match for a dry Chardonnay whereas a chicken in parmesan cheese and butter sauce would not be so great for the Riesling but would be good for the Chardonnay.

"Pitas for dipping"

The first item on the menu was a baked crab and cheese dip with blue organic nachos and pitas. For this I was going to grab a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay as I wanted a big buttery oaky California Chardonnay and the KJ is nice reliable one. The problem is I’ve covered this wine a number of times and the blog content has been sparse recently. I decided to go with a bottle of 2005 Benziger “Los Carneros” Chardonnay instead ‘cause that is just the type of crazy out-on-limb risk taker I am. OK, it was still a California Chardonnay so it would be big and oaky but at least this was a wine that’d I’d never had before.

The crab dip was rich and creamy and so good with either the nachos or the pita but I preferred the nachos by a small margin.

"This wine loves crab dip"

The nose on the Benziger is dominated by vanilla with notes of mango, apples and cloves. Tasting the wine on it own, you’ll notice green apple and vanilla flavour and moderate oak. The structure of the wine was off a bit as the acidity at times seemed high and there was a sharp note in the mid to late palate but the wine did have a nice lingering finish. I wasn’t blown away by it but it wasn’t bad on its own. With the crab dip though, completely different story; the richness of the crab dip mellowed out the sharpness in the wine and the two were a wonderful match.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick – 87, Mark - 89, Kathy – 88, Amy – 87, Overall – 87.5.

There was no LCBO information the wine and the Wine Spectator didn’t review the 2005 version of this wine. This wine was purchased in NY state and the price point on the wine was about $15 US so about $25-27 CDN after duty, taxes and exchange. At that price point on its own I’d say there are better California Chardonnays out there but with the crab dip it was worth every penny. Mick and I were both looking at the empty bottle longingly, as we were finishing off (going back for seconds or thirds) our crab dip, and hoping that another bottle would magically appear.

Click here for Part 2