Sunday, June 12, 2011

Saturday night – Just grin and Beer it – Part 1


Mick and Amy were hosting this past Saturday night’s dinner. When we arrived, Mick announced that all three recipes used beer in their recipes and was using that as his theme for the evening. I’m not a huge beer fan but have no issues with it being used in recipes so I was curious to see what Mick had created.


His first course was mussels in a light cream sauce with freshly sliced baguette. Mick picked a 2009 Fog Head Reserve Chardonnay from California as the pairing for this dish.

The nose on the wine had aromas of pink grapefruit, lilac and vanilla. Tasting the wine was interesting as it had a funky combination of butterscotch and grapefruit as it flavours. The structure to the wine was decent and it was a very smooth and easy drinking Chardonnay. The flavours to the wine got much better with the food as the butterscotch faded away into the background and the crispness of the grapefruit really came out in the wine.


Here is the group rating for the wine – Mick - 86, Mark - 84, Kathy – 83, Amy – 85, Overall – 84.5.

Here is the LCBO information for the wine –

FOG HEAD HIGHLANDS RESERVE CHARDONNAY 2009

VINTAGES 158568
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 17.95
Wine, White Wine
14.5% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : XD
Made in: California, USA
By: Delicato Vineyards
Release Date: Mar 5, 2011

Description - Tasty, toasty Chardonnay with loads of tropical fruit and citrus aromas. Dry and zippy with lots of fruit on the palate. A nicely balanced, mouth-filling wine ideal for pan-seared scallops or smoked chicken.

For a $17 it wasn’t bad though I’d probably lean towards spending $2 more and get a KJ Chardonnay or a Louis Jadot Chardonnay instead.

Mick Mussels were really good, though soaking up the sauce with the bread might have been even better than the Mussels.

Click here for Part 2

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