Pairings Wine & Cheese

I read an interesting article in today’s New York Times  about Stephanie Cabot.  Ms. Cabot was living the seemingly comfortable life of a literary agent in London when her parents, who were residing on the family farm in Walpole, New York, fell ill.

Ms. Cabot packed her family up and returned to Boggy Meadow, a 400-acre property that has been in her family since 1822.  She did this because she wanted to impart the message that “family is all important” to her children.

Since the move to Boggy Meadow, the family has been diligently restoring the farm to a productive state (“Northeast meets Alice Waters”).  Ms. Cabot’s husband, Marcus Lovell-Smith, a noteworthy Brit who supplied the voice of Rudyard Kipling in Ken Burn’s recent national parks documentary, is expanding the cheese-making operation with a recently excavated cavelike space where he ages the cheeses.  “It is amazing how many paths you can take a cheese,” he states.

These cheeses are found in New York restaurants and grocers.  Maybe one day they’ll find their way into a Pairings Wine & Cheese Club offering.

Ms. Cabot’s favorite quote? “Quod cupio mecum est.”  I know what it means, do you?

Ponder it while enjoying some cheese and wine.

Cheers!

As you probably know, the home page of www.PairingsWineandCheese.com has several options for purchasing the unique and diligently paired cheeses and wines. Three of those options are what we refer to as our À la Wine & Cheese Carte (get it?).

These offerings change throughout the year and today we rolled out the new carte.

Check them out:

• The Red Duet includes a bottle of the Clos du Caillou 2007 Cotes du Rhone, Cuvee Unique paired with ½ pound Montegrappa, Treviso, Veneto, Italy

• The White Delight includes a bottle of the David Girard Vineyards. 2007 Coeur du Terroir Blanc El Dorado paired with ½ pound of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, Uplands Cheese Co., WI.

And while the Sparkling Synchronicity is the same as it has been (it changes every three months), it is worth mentioning.  This delicious pairing includes a bottle of the Schramsberg’s Mirabelle Non-Vintage Brut California paired with ½ pound of Bellwether Farms Carmody Sonoma County, California.

For those of you who are club members the Red Duet and White Delight pairings may sound familiar.  They are!  You received these pairing before they were offered to the general public—one of the many benefits of being a member of the Pairings Wine & Cheese Club.

Cheers!

Get to know your local cheesemonger!!  I’ve been buying cheese from one of our local markets for years.  In that time, I have had the pleasure of getting to know the cheesemongers: Robert and Collette.  Over the years I have come to trust that they are going to have the freshest, finest selection of artisan cheese whenever I go shopping.  And they have come to know what my food and flavor preferences tend to be.

But the beauty comes in the fact that they will challenge me to step out of my cheese box and try something completely different.  And…they are always right.  This has been a great way to discover the variety of the world’s cheeses.

This past Saturday, I hosted a Bead for Life event.  Check out their website www.beadforlife.org to learn about this wonderful organization. The event took place in the middle of the afternoon and what better way to spend a glorious Sonoma County autumn day than drinking wine and eating cheese while raising money for a good cause?

On the eve of this event, I walked into my local market where behind the cheese counter with smiling faces were Collette and Robert. I told them that I would be entertaining 20 guests and needed some cheese to pair with South African Chenin Blanc, Monterey Chardonnay, Tuscan Chianti, and South African Rose of Cabernet Sauvignon.  Within 15 minutes, they selected a variety of cheeses that would make even Aristaeus* swoon.

The moral to this story? Had I not had the relationship that I have with these two terrific cheesemongers, even with the cheese knowledge that I have, I would have spent much longer digging through the many cheeses offered.  And probably would not have come up with the diverse and delicious selections they found for me.

And by the way, the cheeses and the wines were a hit at the event.

*ARISTAIOS (or Aristaeus) was the god of shepherds and cheese-making, bee-keeping, honey, honey-mead, olive growing, medicinal herbs and the Etesian winds which eased the scorching heat of midsummer. His name was derived from the Greek word aristos, “most excellent” or “most useful.”

is good for us!  We had a fun outing this past Friday: PWC traveled over the hill to Napa Valley for an afternoon at the Marriott Napa Valley Hotel and Resort.  No, NO!  Don’t get the wrong idea.  We weren’t there to partake in the spa treatments–although that would have been nice and definitely would have been good for the heart.

Thanks to Dr. Rick Nishimura of the Mayo Clinic, we were invited to be presenters during the Cases in Echocardiography conference that was hosted by the Mayo Clinic of Minnesota.

Dr’s. Rick and Carol Nishimura are Pairings Wine and Cheese club members and wanted to share the pleasures of the pairings they receive on a regular basis with their colleagues in heart health.

It was our pleasure to present three different pairings to a group of interested and happy folks.

Thanks, Dr.  Nishimura!