Saturday Night – Choices – Part 1

I was hosting this past Saturday night’s dinner and prior events of the week ended up dictating my menu for the night.  This past Thursday I had a pot luck lunch at work and did shrimp with seafood sauce; the shrimp all went but I had a large amount of homemade seafood sauce leftover and didn’t want to waste it.  I also bought a bottle of Dawson’s Pear Chili Hot sauce from a friend who knows the people who make it (Here is a link to their Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/Dawsonshotsauce for more information).

  

 

So with these two sauces I decided to start with fried shrimp as the starter.  To make things even more interesting I also added a lemon garlic aioli sauce so we’d have 3 different sauces on the side for people to try.  As we had a lot of different flavours happening here I wanted something big enough to handle all the different flavours as my wine pairing and decided to go with a sparkling wine.  I went with a bottle of 2007 Henry of Pelham Cuvee Catherine Blanc de Blanc “Carte Blanche” as my pairing.

The nose was a nice mix of yeast, citrus, wood smoke and floral notes that you didn’t have to work too hard to find.  Tasting the wine, flavours of grapefruit and lime were the dominate flavours with a hint of smoke and it finished with a mandarin orange flavour.  The wine starts very big on the tongue but thins out towards the finish.  The acidity was a touch softer than I would like on a sparkling wine but not by much.  I haven’t had a lot of Canadian Sparkling wines and will say this one impressed me as I have French Champagne’s that weren’t as good as this was.  I’m also not saying here that I’m dumping all my Champagnes down the drain but it was certainly competitive against the big boys and I will be looking forward to trying the 2008 vintage next year.

Here is the group rating for the wine - Mick – 89, Mark – 89 Kathy – 87, Amy – 88, Overall – 88.25.
Here is the LCBO information on the wine –
HENRY OF PELHAM CUVÉE CATHARINE ESTATE BLANC DE BLANC "CARTE BLANCHE"
VINTAGES 315200
750 mL bottle
Price $ 44.95
This is a VQA wine
Made in: Ontario, Canada
By: Henry Of Pelham Family Est. Winery
Release Date: N/A
Wine, Sparkling Wine, White
12.0% Alcohol/Vol.
Style: Rich & Complex
Varietal: Sparkling
Sugar Content: 7 g/L
Sweetness Descriptor: XD - Extra Dry

At $45 a bottle it is a touch pricy but not outrageously so as the Roederer is close to $70 a bottle and while the Roederer is a better wine saving $25 a bottle does make the Henry of Pelham more attractive. 

All three sauces were fun with the shrimp; the Lemon Garlic Aioli was my favourite as it probably was the best pairing for the wine.  The Dawson’s Pear Chile was very good but it was punishingly hot at times.  Going forward with the Dawson’s Pear Chile I will treat it like it is a concentrate and probably add equal parts mayo or sour cream to it to cut it; that said it did have a terrific flavour to it.  My homemade seafood sauce was probably my least favourite as the wine got a touch funky with it at times.

Click here for Part 2