For The LOVE of Viognier                                             July 27, 2019


We made our first Viognier in 2017 and have so enjoyed the food pairings.
With our second release this month, we gathered Viognier lovers for a blind tasting and five course Dinner to show case our 2018 Russian River Viognier.

The blind tasting consisted of five viognier's including ours. It was much harder to find viognier's from different corners of the world currently. I looked in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and found enough selection with varied price points to make it interesting. And it was! The response was great and the wines were a good spectrum of characteristics of this wonderful varietal.

 

         
From $15 - $75, from Rhone to Languedoc-Roussillon, from Willamette to San Luis Obispo with a Russian River in between. The wines were really fun and each of them were favored by some of the guests.

Characteristics from salty, bacon fat, honey, floral, peach fuzz, vanilla, mineral, creamy, viscosity, to mango. A lot of fun notes from this eclectic group of wines. We used every glass in the room and now the food....

 

First course - carrot salad with feta, mint and harissa. A truly great combination and FAB- u-lous with our Viognier! Every morsel was enjoyed, what a great start. Recipe will be added to our web site soon.

 

Next up, seared scallops with fennel pollen on fennel puree, blood orange slice and sauce with nicoise olives, a favorite dish of the night.

 

 

We added 2 other wines to the mix to see how well our menu pairings panned out. Our Manchester Ridge Pinot Noir from Mendocino 2017 and our 2015 Russian River Valley which is a blend of three vineyards.
The Mendocino Pinot definitely competed with the Viognier but the RRV was not in the competition even though it was enjoyed.

Next course was fresh peach, burrata, prosciutto with our favorite local Nightengale Baguette. This is a wonderful combination of flavors that can go well with many white wines. The peach stears it towards Viognier but Rose' would work well also.

 

One of our favorite dishes to make is curry. We enjoy our Pinot's with a variety of curry dishes as well as Viognier. Tonight's Chicken Coconut Curry is mellow on the spice served with quinoa and really well paired with viognier.

 

 

At this point everyone was slowing down on eating and drinking, we only have one more tiny sweet treat to finish, a cookie with peach jam, a special cheese delivered by Freestone Artisan Cheese shop and a late harvest viognier.

 

And thus another fun night of food, wine and great people is done. Just dishes and clean up left.

Next month - Oyster Palooza and a BBQ. Life is good.