One of my classes this semester is Wine Appreciation in the Hospitality and Recreation Management department. It's got to be one of the funner classes in the CSU system (besides surfing and the one where you camp in national parks) and I've actually learned quite a bit about wine. We do blind tastings on 2-3 new wines every week and learn how to describe what we're smelling and tasting.
We had to do a group project about geographic locations and the wines they produce. I was in the Burgundy group and I was hoping to include a photo of Ron Burgundy in the PowerPoint but it didn't work out. I did learn a lot about burgundy though.
One of the more challenging aspects of the project was pairing food with the burgundy. We chose to do vegetarian pairings and that made it more difficult. With the white burgundy (Chardonnay) we did mushroom quiche and with the red burgundy (Pinot Noir) we did French pasta salad as the food was supposed to match the region. I made the pasta salad before class and it was kind of nerve-racking. It consisted of rotini pasta, french shallots, french baby green beans, french goat cheese (see the theme?), roasted bell peppers, toasted hazelnuts, and a dijon vinaigrette.
I chose this salad mainly because I thought the goat cheese would be complementary and because Dijon is the capital of Burgundy, hence the vinaigrette. I thought it tasted awesome but I don't think our sommelier-lecturer was much of a fan, although I think he's just a meat-guy and wasn't into the idea of vegetarian wine pairing. Tomorrow the class is going to Napa Valley for a day-long field trip so it will probably be back-to-back wine entries.
I thought this was kind of cool, I accidentally dropped the remote on my wine glass this weekend and it broke in the perfect spot (and showed me that I need to vacuum between the chairs.)
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