The November club shipment is long gone and the December one is about to depart our warehouse for your enjoyment. Each club shipment includes a detailed newsletter with stories about each of the wines and cheeses that have been “pre-Paired”.
Here is a little edited recap of the November pairings as reported in our newsletter. Read on. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
And if you did not receive this club shipment—check our website, www.PairingsWineandCheese.com, in a few weeks. These pairings may be offered in the A la Wine & Cheese Carte section of the home page.
Go on…read on….
Girard Winery 2007
Pinot Blanc Russian River Valley
paired with
Garroxta, Catalonia, Spain
Girard was founded in 1974 by Steve Girard and was originally located on the Napa Valley floor. In 1995 it was sold to Leslie Rudd, an owner of Dean & Deluca stores. He continued making Girard wines until 2000 when the name was changed to Rudd Estate. At that point Mr. Pat Roney, president of Dean & Deluca, purchased the Girard brand with the intent to rebuild it to its former glory, and hired the talented Marco DiGiulio as winemaker.
Wines were initially custom crushed in Calistoga, and in 2004 Girard moved into its winery on Pritchard Hill above Napa Valley, where it remained until a new state of the art facility was built in Carneros in 2007. So it has been a bit of a journey for Girard Winery, but the vision of Pat and Marco is coming true.
Garrotxa (gar-ROACH-uh) is a north-central province within Catalonia and twenty miles north of the town of Girona. The climate is medium mountain Mediterranean and rainfall is abundant throughout the year; winter is the driest season. The rain showers keep the region cool during the summer and the influence of the Pyrenees makes the winters very cold. It is home to the Zona Volcànica -the greatest example of volcanic landscape in the Iberian Peninsula. It has around forty volcanic cones and over 20 basalt lava flows.
Garrotxa is also the name of this fairly new cheese that has become very popular in Spain over the past decade. So popular in fact that it has inspired many imposters to jump on the Garrotxa bandwagon, prompting the recent application for D.O.C. protection of this local specialty. Josep Cuixart makes this version of Garrotxa in the tiny village of Can Pejol. Aged four months and made in 2-3 pound wheels from pasteurized goat milk, this cheese is unlike any goat cheese you have ever tasted. The color is snowy white, the texture firm with a soft-suede like rind; it has a moist yet almost flakey texture that melts across your tongue. It’s mildly herbal with the briefest whisper of hazelnuts in the aftertaste. The rind forms naturally when the outside of the cheese hardens from contact with the air, and is best left uneaten.
White Oak Vineyards 2005 Merlot Napa Valley
paired with
Mt. Tam, Cowgirl Creamery, Petaluma, California
White Oak Vineyards & Winery is not a story about its vineyard, because it has multiple vineyard sources. It’s a story of people, beginning with founder Bill Myers, a building contractor and Alaska salmon fisherman. In the1970s Bill moved to Healdsburg, sold his boat, purchased a vineyard in Alexander Valley and began making wine.
Merlot is a wine that truly reflects the place it comes from. Excellent farming practices can help, but it really is location, location, and location. And contrary to the movie “Sideways”, Merlot remains one of the better selling varietals. It’s easy to pick on because there is a lot of average Merlot grown, making average wine. The vineyard for these grapes has volcanic soils with strong gravel outcroppings, Serpentine soils and shale deposits. That’s good! The grapes were picked in wonderful condition so Winemaker Bill Parker didn’t have to pull any fancy stunts to make beautiful wine. It was aged for 18 months in 50% new French and Hungarian oak. Shall we go on and on about the black cherry fruit, coffee notes, fine dimensions from a great vintage year and smooth tannins, or say it smells, tastes, and feels just the way we expect a fine Merlot to?
If you’ve been a Member in The Wine & Cheese Club for any length of time, you know all about the Cowgirls. In 1997, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith opened Cowgirl Creamery in Pt. Reyes Station, a picturesque postage-stamp-of-a-town near the coast, about an hour north of San Francisco. They started with an old barn, made it beautiful, put in a small plant for making hand-crafted cheese, bought organic milk from their neighbor, Straus Family Dairy… and before long the world found them! From the beginning they wanted to make delicious artisan cheese, to be environmentally responsible, and they also wanted to support their cheese-making friends in being sustainable land stewards.
Weighing about 8 ounces and standing about an inch and a half tall, a round of Mt. Tam has a thick, snow-white rind that you can eat. The smooth, creamy, ivory paste resembles buttercream frosting. Have some walnut bread to spread it on – wow! Like Brie and other bloomy-rind cheeses, Mt. Tam ripens from the outside in, so it will be softer under the rind and perhaps a touch firm at the center. The rind’s appearance can lead some consumers astray. “People cut into it thinking it’s going to be oozy like a Brie, and it’s not supposed to be,” says Cheesemaker Eric
Patterson, “it’s a firm cheese.” I’m not sure there is a wine that doesn’t go with this cheese; we’ve paired it with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and now Merlot – life is good!
