Poor Man's Wine Cheese Paring: The Sequel

I'm still poor but I'm still pairing my heart out! So here it is!! The long awaited sequel to the Poor Man's Wine Cheese Pairing!! Last time we chose some pretty sweet wines to pair with the cheese that I had already in my fridge which happened to be mozzarella, swiss and american. This time, I am going out of my comfort zone with the wines, we are trying out a Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay. As before, we are using wines from the Gallo Family Vineyard  located in Modesto California. 

Here are our miniature Gallo Family wine labels.

We can't forget the cheese!!

Here is our gorgeous spread, on the nicest cheese plate I own.

Now comes the fun part, the drinking! I was honestly a little apprehensive for this tasting because I have a bit of an aversion to red wine but I gave this my best shot.  The first wine we paired was the merlot, and for the first time I was really able to pinpoint the oaky flavors of a wine. As with the last pairing, I didn't really expect the american cheese to pair well with anything but the oak seemed to balance out artificial flavors and made me think of a grilled cheese sandwich (which I ate after this pairing). The mozzarella was seems to get easily overpowered by the wine and I did not detect any real differences in the wine. I think the merlot paired best with the sharpness of the swiss and really brought out it's funk but did manage to really cover the fruit of the wine.

Gallo Family Merlot

Next up was the chardonnay, I felt I picked up oak in this wine because of tasting the Merlot first, when normally I probably would have picked up more dominantly on the citrus notes. The american cheese ( as expected) went very poorly with this wine and ended up tasting like alcohol cheese wiz. The mozzeralla paired more apporiately with the chardonnay as it did with the sweet wines of the last pairing. What I didn't expect was the outcome of the chardonnay-swiss pairing. The citrus and heat of the wine mixed with the pointed swiss flavors and left you feeling you had eaten something rotten. Overall I didn't enjoy the chardonnay pairings, and I had to give me stomach some time to recover after I tried it.

Gallo Family Chardonnay

After some recuperation I finished off the pairing with the Cabernet Sauvignon. I know I do not like this type of wine and I was even less excited for this after an upset stomach. I prefer the Merlot to this wine but barely, I couldn't differentiate between the two in a blind test. The spices, that I so despise in this wine, lent themselves very nicely to the cheeses. With the american cheese, the pepper served to dilute the pungent artificiality that was a staple of my childhood diet. The mozzarella just got bathed in the pepper in a combination I didn't exactly appreciate, so overall I would say the merlot is the best match for this cheese. When I tried it with the swiss, I was reminded of some of the more potent soft cheeses I have tried but am currently unable to name.

With the conclusion of this pairing, I think I can say that over the course of this semester my palate has expanded a bit and I am getting much better at differentiating flavors in a range of wines.  Even though I was apprehensive at first because of the low price point/quality of our ingredients, I think this pairing series proved to be very eye opening. It is unbelievable how different the results were for sweet wines as compared to the more heavy hitting reds.