Saturday Night – Riesling vs. Chardonnay

Mick and Amy were coming by on Saturday for our usual weekly dinner and I decided to try out a couple of new recipes –

Fresh Corn Soup Topped With Roasted Corn Guacamole -
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fresh-Corn-Soup-Topped-with-Roasted-Corn-Guacamole-352975

And California Chicken Salad –
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/California-Chicken-Salad-352249

"Fresh Corn Soup Topped With Roasted Corn Guacamole"

The downside (or upside depending on your point of view) to new recipes is finding a wine pairing that works with them. I was leaning toward a Merlot with the soup and a Chardonnay with the chicken salad. After doing a few Internet searches, I settled on a Riesling with the soup but stayed with the Chardonnay with the chicken salad. Since I’d never done either recipe before and still was unsure about the pairings I thought it might be fun to try both the Riesling and the Chardonnay with each course.

"Not the greatest example of a Riesling"

For the Chardonnay, I went with an old favourite – a 2005 Kendall Jackson Founder’s Estate Chardonnay. I have covered this wine before a number of times and we all rated it the last time we had it so I won’t go into great detail again -

http://zippysauce.blogspot.com/2009/01/saturday-night-its-chardonnay-time-part.html

"California Chicken Salad"

For the Riesling, I went one that I’d never tried before – a 2005 J.M. Sohler Riesling from Alsace. I’ve had this bottle on the rack for awhile and can’t remember the price off hand. It was purchased at the LCBO, so a did a quick search of their inventory and came across this –

Frey-Sohler Riesling 2007

Vintages 107151
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 16.95
Wine, White Wine,
12.0% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : XD
Made in: Alsace, France
By: Frey-Sohler
Release Date: Mar 14, 2009

Tasting Note - Classic Riesling aromas, including peach, petrol, honeycomb and citrus. Dry and very fresh, with good replays on the palate. A wonderful palate refresher, or match it to grilled salmon steaks with salsa. (VINTAGES panel, July 2008)

- But I’m not 100% sure if this is the 2005 version of the wine above or not.

"Year after year consistantly good!"

The nose on the Riesling is pretty similar to the description from the LCBO where we found lime, petrol and floral (lilac?) aromas. I liked the nose on this wine, too bad the taste didn’t measure up the same way. Green/under-ripe apple was the main flavour to this wine which really needed more fruit, the acidity on the wine was ‘fuzzy’ and not the crisp, razor sharp acidity that you’d expect in a good Riesling. The wine finished in an awkward way that lingered but not in a nice way.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick – 85, Mark - 83, Kathy – 85, Amy – 84, Overall – 84.25.

The wines with the foods –

The KJ Chardonnay with the soup was brutal; reminded me of a toothpaste and orange juice like combo. It was so bad that Kathy was convinced that there was something wrong with the wine/it couldn’t be KJ Chardonnay. The nose and colour of the wine was right so I was sure there was nothing wrong with it and that it was just the pairing that was throwing it for a loop. The Sohler Riesling wasn’t a bad pairing with the soup though it could be tart at times. An off-dry Riesling would have been a better pairing vs. the dry/extra dry that the Sohler was, as the sweetness of the avocado was messing with this wine a bit.

For the main course, the chicken, bacon, pine nut and honey mustard sauce combination was stunning with the KJ Chardonnay. It is actually one of the better wine and food pairings that I’ve had in awhile. Kathy, with the main course, agreed that it was KJ Chardonnay and there was nothing wrong with it. The Riesling with the chicken, etc, was a pretty bad match, not hideous but certainly not anything near good.

Some comments on the two dishes –

The Fresh Corn Soup was excellent; really good flavour from both the soup and the Corn Guacamole. The two issues I had with the soup was 1. There wasn’t a heck of a lot of soup, recipe says 4 to 6 servings and I’d argue that it barely served 4, though the portion sizes on the Corn Guacamole were perfect and 2. It was a fair amount of work to do this recipe, as I have had Corn soup recipes that required half the work and were just as good.

The California Chicken Salad was a nice meal, I wasn’t blown away by it and thought the side corn, tomato, asparagus could have used a nice oil based dressing to perk them up a bit. The honey mustard sauce that was part of the recipe was a bit over the top in flavour and need to be toned down a bit.

In case anyone is wondering why this article is one large one vs. two or three smaller ones like usual, the answer is simple – there was only one wine fully reviewed. I will break up article into as many pieces as there are wines reviewed. The reason I do this is so when you are using the Wine List to find a wine, it will take you straight to the wine article and you don’t have to wad through one or two other reviews before finding the one you want.

Cheers!

Mark