Wine Dinner 2nd Edition: Using Your Parents for Food

This past weekend my Dad came to town, which means I got to eat real food!! It took a little convincing, but once I told him alcohol was involved he submitted. For once, I will have a wine pairing that didn't come from the depths of my fridge.  For this delicious wine dinner we took a trip to Olive Garden in Christiansburg. The wines we sampled were a 2013 Cavit Pino Grigio, Primo Amore Moscato and Horse Heaven Hill Merlot. The dishes we paired with were a fried shrimp appetizer with lemon butter glaze, lemon spice grilled chicken with seasonal vegetables and gigantic pork rigatoni.

It was a miracle we got a picture before this was devoured. I don't think Dad was ready for the picture.

To briefly describe the wines, the moscato was so freaking good! It is the best moscato I have had thus far, it was very well balanced with heavy apple notes. The pinot grigio was nicely crisp and  tasted very much like a dryer version of the moscato. The merlot was quite frankly, awful. It was extremeley bitter and tannic, I struggled to even take a sip after smelling the nose of this wine.

   

For some reason they trusted us with the bottles.

Now let's pair some wines!! The first dish to be paired was the shrimp appetizer. I paired this first with the moscato which worked well with the citrus of the lemon glaze. However, the sweetness of the wine was clearly made for a dessert. The pinot grigio was next, the lemon from the dish paired will with the dry citrus of the wine and I felt was the best pairing of the night. Lastly was the merlot which easily overpowered the delicacy of the lemon shrimp. The dark fruit made the breading of shrimp more prominent but overall overdid the dish.

Lemon Glazed Shrimp

The second dish was the Serrano Lemon Chicken and I have to say I overdid it with the lemon juice on this one which made the dish less appetizing. The moscato once again worked nicely with the with citrus notes but the apple flavors of the wine became more prominent. The apple flavors were a nice reprieve from the inundation of lemon in the sauce and brought out the syrup qualities of the sauce. The second wine paired was the pinot grigio which once again performed well. The dryness of the wine brought out some of the spices rubbed on the chicken itself that were overpowered by lemon when tried without the wine. Lastly was the merlot which did better with the chicken dish than the shrimp but was clearly meant for a red meat dish. The tannic bitter taste of the merlot masked some of the lemon of the dish but it all came together to make the wine seem even more acidic and unbalanced. Overall I still feel it did not pair well.

Serrano Chicken 

The final dish to be paired was the baked pork rigatoni. Upon tasting this dish I managed to burn most of my mouth and nearly choke a huge string of molten cheese which definitely affected my ability to taste at all. As usual the first wine was the moscato which for me did not mesh well with the dish. The classic italian spices of the dish were much more savory than the wine and caused it to taste even more sickly sweet than it actually is. The next wine was the pinot, which unfortunately fell flat. The flavors of the wine were covered by the flavors of the sauce in the dish. The final wine to be paired was the merlot, which paired best with this dish.  Even though I did not even enjoy this wine in the slightest, the wine had the strength of flavor to not be masked by the dish. The tannic taste of the wine was mellowed out well by the saucy cheesiness of the dish that made the wine more enjoyable.

Gigantic Pork Rigatoni

 The best part of this tasting for me was the fact that I genuinely enjoyed a wine that wasn't a moscato. My favorite wine of the night however remains the moscato even though it did not really pair well with any of the dishes. I think in the next wine pairing there will be more research involved. I feel that all of the pairings thus fair have been relatively random so there hasn't been any common trends in pairing. I know that all meals have a recommended wine to pair with and would love to see how these recommended wines affect the flavors of the dish and bring out the full rang of flavors.